The Makers
by USAF ParaJumper
Summary: After Isaac destroyed the second marker, he and Ellie crashed in the Dragon Relms, but once a planet cracker learns about this planet's rich resources Isaac will try with all his might to save Ellie and his new friends, even if it kills him.
1. Soon be over

Isaac was running down the railing to meet Niccole where she told him to meet her."Go to the light." He saw her glowing white on a platform that was slightly elevated in front of the Marker. Her glowing was so bright it was getting very difficult to clearly see what was on the platform.

'At long last, there it is. Hopefully this will soon be over.' Isaac thought as he stepped onto the platform. He was about to call out to Niccole but was cut off when director Tideman shot a javelin spear at him which went all the way through his left shoulder.

"The research we put into that marker is worth every life we just lost!" He yelled. The pain that went through Isaac's arm and torso was growing every inch that he would pull the spear out of his shoulder. Once it was completely out of his body, he painfully lifted his arm and attempted to use his stasis on Tideman before he could fire again, but Isaac was not fast enough. The second spear went right through his left hand while his was trying to use his suit's stasis on him. As he was removing the projectile form his hand, Tideman was reloading the javelin so he could make the kill. "I will not let you throw all of this away." He lifted his javelin and took aim at Isaac's head. As he pulled the trigger, Isaac moved to his left, took hold of the tool and broke his arm, releasing his grip on the weapon. Then Isaac brought his arm down, breaking it a second time, aimed the javelin point blank at his throat and fired, cutting off the his airway. As Isaac watched him drowning in his own blood, he walked around behind him and turned on the sights to the mining tool and aimed at the back of his neck and fired, decapitating him.

Tired and losing blood, Isaac dropped the tool and deactivated his helmet making it come apart piece by piece and go into his suit and walked over to Niccole who hugged his head. "Thank you Isaac. Now…time to die." Those words made his heart skip a beat.

"What!" Isaac said while Niccole entered his mind and projected a rocky platform floating in space with the marker floating about a quarter of a mile away from their platform which slowly disappeared.

"Yours is the last body we need to be reborn! The makers must be absorbed!" Niccole said in a slight demonic tone.

"The makers? You mean me? But Stross said that we could destroy the marker!"

"Not if we can consume you first!"

"Dammit I trusted you! Fuck you! And fuck your marker!" Niccole appeared to his right and started walking towards Isaac with outstretched arms. 'I should have never trusted you Niccole; I should have let you go.' Isaac equipped his plasma cutter and started firing at her, her cries of pain slowly torn into Isaac each time he pulled the trigger but he knew that this had to be done. After each shot he fired at her, the marker would glow brighter and brighter. After firing eight shots from his plasma cutter at her, she disappeared in a white flash and the marker behind her exploded and revealed a large cluster of infected flesh like the weak spots on large necromorphs. Instinctually, Isaac reloaded his tool and started firing at it, using an entire clip. While he was reloading, the marker started to reanimate itself and Niccole appeared again with two dozen pack.

"Give up Isaac." Niccole said. Isaac started to panic as the pack was swarming him while Niccole was walking towards him. "Make us whole" She started to scream as Isaac equipped his ripper and activated its primary firing mode and started to mow down six of the pack. Isaac then switched to the ripper's secondary firing mode and started firing at Niccole.

'I'm sorry Niccole but I can't let you do this.' Isaac thought as she disappeared like the last time along with the rest of the pack that he hadn't already dismembered. The marker turned into a cluster of flesh again as Isaac equipped his pulse rifle and noticed that he only had two hundred rounds left. 'Crap, I only have a few magazines left. I'm going to have to use this sparingly.' Isaac thought as he emptied what was left of his clip and switched to his ripper and fired two blades at the marker. The marker then reanimated itself again and Niccole appeared with more pack and a few puckers. 'Damn I hate these things.'

Isaac equipped and reloaded his plasma cutter and started to decapitate the puckers and kill any pack that got too close for comfort. As he was reloading his mining tool, Niccole was walking closer and closer to him and said in a demonic voice, "Make us whole." Her cries of pain continued to pierce its way into Isaac's head with every shot he fired at her.

'This is for betraying and making a fool out of me.' Isaac shouted in his mind as Niccole once again disappeared along with any surviving necromorphs, causing the marker to turn into the infected flesh again. Isaac switch to his pulse rifle reloaded it and fired at the marker leaving only one hundred rounds left of ammunition in his inventory. 'Holy crap, what's happening?' Isaac thought as the marker exploded causing the symbols that were once engraved into it to form a ring around the platform. After about five seconds of the ring of symbols circling above him, it went back into the marker, making another explosion which released its control over Isaac's thoughts. Isaac was now in full control over his body and saw that the marker was starting to break apart around him.

"Warning: Reactor containment destabilized. A reactor breach is imminent. Evacuation of all personnel is required. This is not a drill." His RIG warned.

'Well no use running, if I do I'll just die tired.' Isaac thought as he sat down, accepting his fate.

"Engaging auxiliary power systems." His RIG stated which Isaac ignored."Warning: Reactor containment failure. A Reactor breach is now in progress. Evacuate immediately, all personnel, all civilians. This is not a drill."

'Why did she have to do that? I thought she was going to help me destroy it.' Isaac thought as his RIG spoke again with another warning, which fell on deaf ears.

"Warning: Life support failure. Seek protection immediately." Isaac had his head hung as he waiting for his death to come when his RIG project a video link with Ellie that made him flinch.

"You complete bastard!" she said, "Was this your great plan? Dump me off and die?" she question in the cockpit of her ship. She started to punch in controls to the ship as Isaac spoke.

"I'm full of bad ideas, remember?"

"Yeah, well, here's another one: I'm crashing through the roof to get you. Now move your ass!"

"Wait! No! Ellie! Ellie, it's too late" Isaac said as he got back up on his feet, "Steer clear of the station!"

"Yeah, well you don't really have a say this time." Isaac watched as Ellie hit another button to the ship, "Heads up!" Ellie said as the roof of the marker chamber exploded allowing her small ship to fly in and hover for a little while thirty feet above Isaac before it started to fly back to the roof.

"Warning: Hull breach. Decompression." Isaac's RIG warned."Warning: Gravity failure." Isaac started to float as his helmet automatically activated and made a seal around his head. Isaac did several flips and activated his RIG's thruster while Ellie flew In front of him. They both flew around the marker several times while the sprawl was clasping in on itself; Isaac narrowly missed several large scraps of debris while trying to catch up to Ellie who opened the side hatch of the ship and reached out to Isaac in a pressurized suit.

"Isaac, take my hand!" He set his thrusters to one hundred percent power and reached out to Ellie.

"I'm trying! I'm trying!" Isaac shouted before Ellie pulled him into the ship making him crash into the other side of the narrow ship.

"Shut the hatch! Shut the hatch!" Ellie yelled as Isaac stood back up and regained his balance on the continually shaking ship. Once he was upright he walked over to the hatch and watched the sprawl explode to make sure that the marker was destroyed.

"Holy crap!" Isaac said as he closed the hatch in time for the small ship to feel the shock wave from the explosion hit them. After a few minutes of staring out at the completely destroyed sprawl, Isaac sat down in the cock pit of the ship and breathed heavily. 'At last, it's finally over.' He thought when he leaned back in his chair exhausted. 'How many lives were lost because of Tideman?' Isaac wondered while he charted a course for the nearest planet that they could resupply at. 'Wait minute, this seems very familiar.' Isaac recalled what happened after he escaped the USG Ishimura. He took in a deep breath before turning around to look at the passenger seat.

"What?" Is all that Ellie had to say.

* * *

**I hope to update this story as often as possible and if you have any ideas or feedback then please review or PM me. Have a good one. - USAF Parajumper**


	2. Full of bad ideas

It's been two days since Isaac and Ellie escaped the Sprawl and were heading to the nearest planet that could support life. "It's a shame that Earth can no longer keep anything alive, we could have gotten there in a few minutes with the ship being able to go ten times the speed of light. Now we have to go outside of our solar system." Ellie stated.

"I'm not even sure that I would even want to go there even if it could. I've heard about how bad and corrupt the people there were before the Earth got to the state it's in now." Isaac said as he was eating out of a food canister.

"Is out here in space any different?" She questioned.

"I guess not." Isaac replied, "Do you want the rest of my food? I'm not very hungry." Isaac reached out to give her the canister.

"Sure, thank you." She took the canister from his hand and started eating. "How much food do we have left?"

"Enough for about four more meals, we should reach the planet that the ship picked up earlier by tomorrow at this speed." Isaac got up from his chair and went to a wall locker that held their weapons and pulled out Ellie's plasma cutter. "I never got the chance to ask you this, but where did you get this plasma cutter anyway? Did a miner give it to you?"

"Sort of. I was piloting a cargo ship when the necromorph outbreak started; there was a man there who was on a mining team, he was off loading some of the equipment and he put his plasma cutter on one of the crates and started opening some of the others. We were fairly close to site 12 where the marker was held and he started to act very strangely, I walked up to him and asked if he was alright, and that's when he punched me." Isaac walked over to her seat and continued listening. "Some of the other miners tried to restrain him but when they tried, two large blades came out of his back and he started killing them. So while the survivors ran, I grabbed his plasma cutter on the crate and started firing at his body."

"You didn't cut off the limbs?" Isaac questioned.

"I didn't know at the time." Ellie answered. "I ran out of ammo and it was still coming after me, it was about to kill me when someone fired a line gun at it. He came over to me and told that his name was Kaleb, so after that we decided to seek shelter together; it's a good thing that I'm immune to the marker."

"Interesting, I got mine from a medical bay while it was being used to give sugary to someone who was still conscious." He said as Ellie laughed. "I think I'm going to turn in for the night. How about you?"

Ellie put down the empty food canister. "I think I will as well." She said while standing up and started walking past the locker and hit a button that made two beds slide out from the wall. As she climbed into bed Isaac spoke up.

"Hey, Ellie." He said.

"What is it Isaac?" She replied.

"Thank you for going back for me." He said as Ellie pulled a blanket over herself.

"Your welcome." She said as she turned off the lights to the cabin. Isaac crawled into the top bunk and fell asleep.

The next morning Isaac and Ellie woke up to the sound of an alarm. "Warning: Planet collision course set. Impact in thirty seconds."

They both jumped out of bed and ran straight for the controls. "Slow down the ship; turn off the engines if you have to!" Isaac shouted as he turned off the auto-pilot.

"Warning: Engine failure. Calibrating for new velocity. Impact in sixty seconds." The computer warned. The ship was cutting into the lower levels of the atmosphere and they both could clearly see large grasslands with very few trees and a large lake in the center of it that poured into rivers that went into a swamp.

"Crap, were coming in too fast Ellie!" Isaac shouted while getting up from his seat. "I want you to try to put the ship into the lake, were moving too fast to make a normal landing!"

"Then what are you going to do?" She yelled while taking over the controls of the ship.

"I'm going to start packing whatever supplies we are going to need." Isaac quickly ran over to the supply locker and grabbed some food and water bottles and quickly started attaching the all weapons and ammo to his armor and gave Ellie's plasma cutter, javelin, and line gun to her. "How much time is left?"

"Thirty seconds left!" Ellie yelled as she attached the tool to her belt.

"Open the hatch and come here!" Ellie got up from the seat grabbed two large and two medium medical packs and opened the hatch. "I want you to hold onto me, were going to jump!"

"What? We won't survive at this speed!" She exclaimed.

"My thrusters will help break the fall!" Isaac yelled.

"This is crazy!" she shouted as she held onto Isaac, wrapping her arm around his armor.

"I'm full of bad ideas, remember?" He said while the RIG's built-in Helmet formed over his head. He jumped out of the ship with her and activated his RIG's thrusters, making sure that Ellie's legs didn't get caught as they began to slow down. "Hold your breath!" He shouted before they hit the water. Isaac swam up to the surface and made sure that Ellie was able to breathe before he dove back down to watch the ship slowly sink into the water. It was a struggle to get back to shore with the weight of their equipment. When they both arrived at shore Ellie put her face into her knees and started crying.

"That ship was our only way of getting rescued. Now we will never get help." Isaac walked up to her sat down while deactivating the RIG's helmet and put his arm around her.

"Ellie, we will be rescued. There must be civilization on this planet;nwe can get their help, I promise." He said, hoping to make her feel better, 'I hope that there are human colonies on this planet.' He thought.

"I didn't see any sort of buildings when we crashed here. Did you?" She asked.

"No I didn't, but that doesn't mean that there aren't any." He said as he stood up and offered her a hand which she accepted. "The best thing that we can do is start looking; I think that we should head for that swamp, we will be able to find food and filter the water there. Out here on these plains there is little shade and no animals to hunt from what I can tell."

"Ok, let's go." She said as they started walking towards them swamp. They walked along the side of the river for about fifteen minutes before they entered the swamp. "Are you sure about this Isaac?"

"No." He honestly replied. After about an hour of hiking through the swamp they decided to take a food and water break. "I have a water bottle that I filled up at the lake." He handed her the water and pulled out one of the food canisters and let her eat the first half of it.

"Here, you can have the first half." He handed her the food canister and started to form a plan of how they should set up camp. "We should start to make camp, it's starting to get dark." Isaac looked at the setting sun and guessed that they had only about an hour before night.

"I'll start to make fire; can you make shelter?" Ellie asked.

"I'm on it." He said as Ellie started to gather wood. "When we find a colony I need someone to have a look at your eye or, thanks to Stross, eye socket." Ellie chucked at this.

"I'm sure someone there can help me." Isaac carried two large logs with his kinesis, over to a flat boulder that stood up straight, and leaned them up against it at a forty-five degree angle.

'It seems so depressing out here.' Isaac thought, 'I think I'll put some music on.' Isaac pulled up a list of songs from his RIG's holographic display and put on some country songs, being mindful that Ellie might not like 'metal' music.

"Why do you have that in your RIG?" Ellie asked after he started playing his music.

"It gets boring after a while of working so I turn on my music while I work." He said while putting up a canopy made up of leaves and vines on the logs.

"Or while you're killing hundreds of necromorphs." She joked.

"I didn't put it in this suit on purpose; whenever I change suits the computer transfers any data from the old RIG to the new one." Isaac explained. "So, how is the fire going?" Isaac asked.

"I just need to light it and it'll will be ready." Isaac started putting his tools into a corner by the shelter that he made and went over to Ellie and sat down next to her by the fire and deactivated his helmet.

Ellie rested her head on his left shoulder as he put his arm around her and spoke. "Don't worry; we will make it I promise." He said, "And when we get there we will take care of your eye."

Ellie turned her head to face his, "Thank you Isaac." She said. They both just sat there for a while until they both decided to go to sleep and went into the shelter that Isaac made and went to bed, unknowing that about a dozen apes were watching them from about three hundred yards away.

"Are we going to attack them or not?" a smaller ape said to their pack leader.

"Wait until we get the all clear signal form the captain, then we will strike."

* * *

**Wahoo! Two chapters in about six hours, this story can only get better if you review it. I know I'm coming a bit strong with Ellie and Isaac but there wont be as much of it later on. The next chapter will start with a fight scean and i hope to bring in the dragons in the next chapter.**


	3. Rude awakening

**I had to edit ch. 2 for this one, but the only thing that I changed was tha Ellie got a line gun from Isaac. Enjoy.**

They sun was starting to rise when Ellie woke up, she decided to let Isaac sleep for a little while longer and grabbed her plasma cutter from the pile of weapons that Isaac had placed and attached it to her belt. 'It's a bit cold out here.' She thought while she put some more wood on the fire and sat down next to it.

* * *

In the distance, there were twelve apes that have been waiting hours for permission to attack the humans when a squad of thirty small apes and ten medium sized apes approached, some with various wounds. "What happened to your squad?" The pack leader asked.

"We were attacked by the purple dragon and two others." The squad leader said. "As far as we know they are still tracking us, they killed about half our squad before I gave the retreat. We've been running for thirty minutes before we found your pack. " The ape explained. "So, what are you doing so far in the dragon's territory?" He questioned.

"We have been observing these creatures that have set up a camp out here in the forest." The pack leader pointed to where Isaac and Ellie were. "We were about to raid them until I saw one of them, who is in that tent, lifting those large logs with some glowing thing on his wrist." He continued as the squad leader listened with interest. "They also have what look like weapons next to their tent so I sent one of my apes with a letter asking for reinforcements to our captain."

The squad leader turned to face the pack leader, "Myself and the squad will be more than willing to help you kill these creatures," He started walking to the other apes who were sitting around, still waiting for their orders. "But we must move with haste, we don't know how far the dragons are away from us."

Ellie walked to where Isaac was sleeping and started shaking him by his arms. "Wake up Isaac." She started to shake him harder when he didn't respond. "Wake up." Isaac let out a moan and rolled onto his side.

"What is it?" He whined.

"It's time to start moving again so get up off your ass and help me." She said as she started gathering their tools.

Isaac sat up and started rubbing his eyes. "Ok I'm up?" He said while he got up and walked out of the tent and activated his helmet that took shape around his head.

Ellie tossed his pulse rifle and plasma cutter to him while she took the javelin gun that Isaac got from Tideman before they escaped the sprawl and strapped it to her back with a sling she had and equipped her line gun. "That's the direction that we came from so we need to head in that direction." She said as she pointed to the North.

They were walking away from their camp while Ellie was inspecting her weapons. Isaac faced her "Are you sure this is the direction we shou-?" Isaac was cut off when a small ape jumped onto his back and started clawing at his shoulders. "What the fuck! Get it off!" He screamed while Ellie equipped her plasma cutter and fired at the ape three times, killing it. Isaac threw the corpse off his back and equipped his ripper when eight more apes jumped down from the trees and two from the bushes.

"What are these things?" Ellie yelled while firing at the charging apes, killing another two of them.

"I don't know!" Isaac said as he used the ripper's primary firing mode and mowed down three of the apes and fired the blade at another one that jumped at Ellie. The surviving four watched as their pack mates were brutally slaughtered by the humans and decided to do the wise thing, run. Isaac and Ellie reloaded their tools while they looked up in the trees and saw about forty more of the small creatures along with eleven larger ones. "Run." Isaac suggested.

"Run!" Ellie agreed.

The pack and squad leaders watched the small ape get dismembered as the others he sent out run for their lives. When the humans started to run he yelled to the remaining apes, "After them!" The squad leader yelled. Once he gave the command they started jumping from branch to branch while the apes that attempted to attack the humans ran after them on foot.

"Did you just hear one of those things talk?" Isaac shouted to Ellie, hoping that he wasn't just hearing things like the hallucinations he had on the sprawl of Niccole.

"Yeah, but I think we have bigger problems." She said while looking behind them. "What do we do now, just keep running?"

"No, we walk!" Isaac yelled sarcastically. "Of course we run!" Isaac looked above them and saw that they were also perusing them by tree and switched to his pulse rifle. "There, above us!" He yelled as he fired a grenade into the canopy of branches that killed three another apes and reloaded the gun.

* * *

A few hundred yards in front of them there were three dragons that were out searching for a large group of apes that had burned a small village, standing in a circular clearing. In the group was Spyro, a purple dragon with a yellow underbelly and two zigzag-shaped yellow horns, Cynder, a black dragoness with a red underbelly with six white horns, and a maroon fear dragoness that had a black underbelly and wing membranes and two horns that curved slightly backwards. The group of dragons heard a loud explosion and screaming that was getting closer by the second but couldn't see what was causing it due to heavy foliage.

"Nick, I want you to attack whatever comes out of those bushes once you get a clear shot, got it?" He said to the fear dragoness.

"Got it." She confirmed as she took a fighting stance.

"Cynder, watch out for her, she is still new at this." Spyro said and received a nod from Cynder who also got into a battle stance. "They are almost on top of us."

* * *

"Keep running Ellie, Don't stop!" Isaac yelled. As they were running they were firing at them, kill a few of the smaller apes and a larger one. "There's a clearing up ahead!" He shouted as they ran through some large bushes. They made only made it a few feet when something jumped onto Ellie, knocking her to the ground. Isaac turned to see a red, dragon-like creature on top of her; Isaac lifted his pulse rifle and was about to shoot it when another one of the dragon-like animals knocked his weapon out of his hands.

Ellie was able to free herself from the attacker and was about to fire her line gun at the creature when she heard a young man's voice, "Cynder, Nick stop!" Ellie and Isaac quickly turned to see a purple dragon.

The dragon was about to speak again when the apes that were chasing the humans, jumped out of the trees and started to attack the group. Isaac picked up his pulse rifle and fired at a larger ape, killing it then launched a grenade at a group of small apes, killing another three while using the rest of his pulse rounds. Ellie equipped her plasma cutter and started cutting off the ape's limbs while the three dragons joined the fight using their elemental abilities to kill the attackers.

After a few minutes of constant fighting, the Ellie started running out of ammo to her plasma cutter and switched to her javelin. She watched as Isaac started getting overwhelmed by the smaller apes and ran over to help him but was blocked when three of the larger apes surrounded her. Ellie fired her weapon at the nearest one and pinned him to a nearby tree, she turned to fire at another one when the black dragon jumped on top of it and proceeded to claw at its face and bite into the neck, crushing the wind pipe.

"Ellie!" Isaac shouted. "I could use your help over here!"

"I'm kind of busy right now!" She yelled back as she turned to the third larger ape and fired a javelin spear at its chest, collapsing its lung. The ape pulled the spear out of its chest and pointed it at Ellie.

"Your weapons are no matc-" He was cut off when Ellie pushed a button on the javelin that electrified the spear.

"Says who, bitch?" Ellie said to herself while she watched the smoking corpse fall to the ground.

Isaac was soon grappled from behind by one of the larger apes that stood about a foot taller than all the others; he assumed that this one was the leader. The ape bit into his left shoulder, but thanks to his Rig, the attack did not do much harm. Isaac couldn't get a good grip on the ape so, he started bashing its head in with his plasma cutter, crushing the skull, making its brain bleed. Once it was off of him, the ape started rolling in the ground while holding its head, trying to stop the pain. Isaac looked around him and noticed that the smaller apes were watching in shock that their leader was beaten so easily; He slowly walked up to the screeching ape on the ground, lifted his boot, and let out a loud grunt while he crushed its neck and kicked the severed head towards the group of stunned apes.

"The squad leader is dead!" One of the apes yelled. "Retreat!"

The group of humans and dragons watched the surviving apes run off into the trees while the human reloaded the weapons that they still had ammunition to. "What is this place?" Isaac said to Ellie. They turned around to see that the dragons stopped attacking and were now just staring at them with curiosity.

"Who and what are you?" Spyro asked the humans.

Ellie pointed her line gun at Spyro, "Why should we tell you? You tried to kill me just a little while ago." Ellie received a growl from Cynder and Nick, Isaac noticed that the two were about to attack so he put his hand on top of the line gun and lowered it so that it was no longer pointing at them.

Isaac deactivated his RIG's helmet to appear less intimidating to them and introduced himself. "My name is Isaac Clarke, and this is Ellie Langford. We crashed in a lake when our ship had a problem with its engines, can you tell us exactly where we are and what were those things?"

"This place is known as the Dragon Realms and those were apes that served the dark master during a war that ended two years ago." He was about to introduce them when Nick cut in.

"Don't you think that we should head back to the city just in case any more decide to show up?" She asked.

'City?' Ellie thought, recalling that they couldn't spot anything when they crashed.

"You're probably right, we need to keep moving." Spyro said to Nick then turned to face the humans. "Would you like to come with us? You both could stay there at the new temple and you could meet our leaders, they should be able to help you both in some way."

"I think that would be good." Ellie said to Isaac.

"I think so two." He replied. "How far away is it?" He asked the dragons.

Cynder spoke to the humans, "If we move now we should get there by night fall, so let's get going." Cynder started walking as the others followed her lead. "My name is Cynder by the way." She pointed to Spyro, "His name is Spyro, we fought together during the war against the dark master; and her name is Nick, right now she is in training and she asked us if she could join us in trying to find those apes."

Nick turned to Isaac, "Nick is my nickname, my real name is Niccole."

Isaac stopped dead in his tracks, 'Oh fuck.' He thought.

**I hope to make another update to this story on the weeked, but until then, please review or pm me. Have a good one- USAF Parajumper**


	4. Let it go

**After reading the past chapters I noticed that I have been miss spelling Nicole's name the whole time. (Fail) I would like to thank Native Avenger for letting me use his idea for making ammo, I highly reccomend looking at his stories. Also I thank those who have reviewed and sent me PM's about Nick's full name, I still laugh about it when I read it. Anyway enjoy.**

They walked in silence for about an hour until they stopped to rest. Isaac took the moment to do a weapons check with Ellie, who sat down next to him and pulled out her line gun. "I have about ten more line racks left and about fifteen more javelin spears." She said while she noticed that Isaac was acting strange ever since Nick told him her name. She whispered to him, "Why are you acting so strange around that dragon over there?" Ellie glanced over to Nick so Isaac knew who she was talking about.

Isaac wanted to tell her about Nicole but knew that this was not the time, 'Why is it that I still can't let her go?' Isaac thought to himself behind his helmet before he answered Ellie's question. "It's nothing, I'm good on plasma energy, I'm out of pulse rounds and I have about twenty-five ripper blades left." Isaac said, trying to change the topic from himself. He turned away from Ellie and was a little surprised to see Nick standing to his left.

"Can I ask you something?" The dragon asked.

"Sure." Isaac said. He was still uneasy about being near the dragon that was named after his dead girlfriend that tried to kill him multiple times on the sprawl.

The fear dragoness spoke, "Where exactly did you both come from?"

Isaac thought about what he should say for a second and was about to speak, but Ellie put her hand of his leg so she could get his attention. He looked at her and she shook her head, letting him know that now was not the best time. "We will tell you all when we get to meet your leaders that Spyro told us about earlier."

Nick seemed disappointed about his answer but understood that she should wait until they arrived at Warfang.

They decided that it was time to continue walking. About thirty more minutes of walking, Spyro walked up to a large group of crystals, "Isaac can we stop for a minute?"

Isaac was annoyed by his question because they had just taken a break. "We just took a break a little while ago, so don't tell me that you're tired again." Isaac whined.

Nick and Cynder walked up to the crystals and started breaking them. "Those are spirit gems; they recharge the energy of dragons as well as heal them." Spyro went over to the crystals and started to break them along with the other dragons.

Isaac inspected the crystals and searched through his RIG's computer so he could identify what kind of crystals they were. "Hey Ellie, can you come over here?" Isaac asked.

Ellie walked over to Isaac who was still searching through the field guide in his RIG. "What's up?" She asked.

"I haven't seen any crystals like this, but it does have some of the materials that make up our plasma energy, pulse rounds, and line racks." Isaac closed the RIG's holographic computer. "They could make a good ammo alternative."

"How many should we take?" Ellie asked as Isaac started breaking the brittle gems.

"As many as we can carry." Isaac replied. Ellie started to smash a group of crystals and put them into her inventory. Spyro walked over to the humans after he absorbed as many of the spirit gems as he needed.

"Are you both ready to go?" Spyro asked Ellie.

"Yes." She replied

The group continued walking for another hour or so until they exited the swamp on the opposite side of where they entered. "How much farther is the city from here?" Ellie asked Spyro when she noticed that the sky was getting darker.

The purple dragon turned to her and answered. "We should be able to see it once we get up over that hill, from there it shouldn't be much longer."

Nick was starting to become impatient and wanted to start asking Isaac more about his armor and where they came from. Finally her curiosity got the better of her; she walked up to Isaac's side and starting asking him questions. "So what exactly is that suit supposed to do?"

Isaac wanted to wait until they arrived at the city but he thought he could answer just a few questions to satisfy her. "This suit allows me to move around and breathe in space so that I can repair any equipment that is not in a livable environment."

Cynder heard his explanation and had question of her own that she wanted answers to. She walked over to Isaac's other side and started asking him questions. "Where did you get it?" Isaac was about to answer her when Nick interrupted her.

"What are those blue bars on your back?" Nick asked.

"Is it hot in that" Cynder asked. Both of the dragonesses continued to interrupt each other and ask Isaac more questions.

Ellie and Spyro chuckled at all the attention that Isaac was getting. "So how did you lose your eye exactly?" Spyro questioned.

"I lost it from a psychopathic man who was trying to help Isaac destroy an artifact on the station that we were at a few days ago. We got separated and I was stuck with him, he told me that I had to follow certain steps so that I could see what he could see." Ellie crossed her arms and a shiver went down her back as she recalled what Stross did to her. "I tried to fight him but he would not stop trying to put me through his steps; he was able to pin me to the ground and he took a screw driver out and-." She was about to continue her story, when Isaac stepped into the conversation, trying to get away from the two female dragons.

"There it is." Isaac said while pointing to Warfang as it came into view.

"Wow." Ellie said with a surprised expression on her face. "I didn't expect that the city would be that big." Ellie took a moment to stare at the detailed sculptures of dragons along with the patterns of the city's walls and towers. The group arrived at the gate when a mole guard stopped to greet them. Isaac and Ellie stopped and gave each other a confused expression about the creatures that lived in the city while Spyro spoke to the guard. The two humans knew that the mole was not sure about letting them in.

"Are you sure that they are ok?" The guard said to Spyro in a hushed tone while eyeing the two humans.

"We found them in the swamp; they were being attacked by dozens of the apes, so we helped them out and I asked if they wanted to come with us." The guard was still unconvinced. "Were going to see the guardians, they will know what to do."

Once Spyro was done talking, the guard opened the gate to let them in. "So, where are we going exactly?" Isaac asked Cynder while admiring some of the highly detailed buildings.

"Were going through the market to the new temple where the guardians should be at." Cynder noticed how Isaac was looking around at the various stands curiously. "I'll show you around Warfang once we've spoke to the guardians."

Isaac stopped looking around and turned to Cynder, "I'm not looking at the stands." Cynder had a confused expression. "I'm looking for a doctor." Isaac turned slightly to Ellie who was talking to Nick, who had questions about her and Isaac. "I told Ellie that I would get her to someone who could take care of it; her eye socket is still in a lot of pain."

Cynder had a look of sympathy toward Ellie, "I'll take her to a doctor once we meet the guardians." She assured Isaac.

Isaac and Ellie were being observed by the dragons and moles that were closing their shops for the night. The human decided to ignore them and continue walking toward the temple. Ellie was looking at various stands including blacksmiths, food stand, and tailors, 'I'll have to look around here when I get the chance.' Ellie thought to herself.

The group of five finally arrived at the newly finished temple. The temple was a light brown with five large towers around the base of it with large courtyards that were on the sides of the temple. They entered through the gates in the front and walked into a room that had a large spiral staircase that lead to several hallways that extended from it; they climbed the staircase to the top floor that led to a small hallway that had a large brown door that had two carvings of dragons that were facing each other.

Nick knocked on the door twice and took a step back while she waited for a response; "Come in." a deep-voice told them. The three dragons walked in first closely followed by Isaac and Ellie who closed the door behind them. In the room there were three large dragons that were about two feet taller than the humans they were gathered around a green pool that was in the center of the room; the one on the left was bright yellow with a blue underbelly and wing membranes; the dragon in the center is dark green with a yellow underbelly and had ram-like horns; the dragon to the right is a light blue and has a darker blue underbelly.

The large dragons had a confused expression as the humans walked in. "And just who might be?" the yellow dragon asked.

Isaac deactivated his helmet as he stepped forward. The yellow dragon lifted an eyebrow as he saw his helmet 'break apart' and become another part of his armor. "My name is Isaac Clarke, and this is Ellie Langford. We crashed on your planet yesterday when our ship had an engine problem."

"My name is Cyril, I am the ice guardian." He said proudly.

Ellie leaned over is Isaac and whispered, "Someone is a bit condescending."

The green dragon in the center rolled his eyes at how Cyril was acting as if he was the most important being at Warfang. "My name is Terrador; I'm the earth guardian, I'm also in charge around here." He said as he turned slightly towards Cyril making sure he got the message.

The yellow dragon chuckled, "Please excuse our friend here, he thinks highly of himself because of his royal ancestry. My name is Volteer; I am the guardian of electricity; if you don't mind I have a few questions for the two of you."

Ellie was about to speak but was cut off when Terrador spoke to Volteer. "I'm sure that everyone has questions, but it is late and I'm sure that our guests are very tired and hungry from their journey, so that will have to wait until morning." Volteer nodded understandingly.

"Thank you Terrador." Ellie said. "Do you have anywhere that we could possibly stay here in the city?"

"Of course we do. After all, this temple does have several dormitories."Cyril said as though it were obvious. "The cafeteria should still be open; after that, Nicole will show you two to a currently vacant room where the two of you can stay."

They left the pool of visions room and went down the stairs, when they reached the ground level Isaac spoke to Nick, "Is it alright if you show me to the room now? I'm not very hungry and I'll be able to show Ellie where it's at when you're done eating." Isaac was hungry but needed to be alone for a little while.

"Sure, follow me." Nick said while she went back up the stairs and onto the second floor with Isaac. There were four hallways that branched out into two more hallways that connected to each other in a square-shaped area." Your room is down this way." She said while walking down a hallway to her left followed by Isaac. They came to a red door that was made for dragons that were young adults, the door was about twice as wide as those on the sprawl and were slightly shorter, but not by much. When they entered the room, Isaac took a look around the room. It was a good sized maroon colored room that had a closet three mats that he assumed were beds; put his tools on one of the three desks that were a little more than knee height. "How do you like it?" Nick asked.

Isaac took another look around and answered, "It's nice, I'll have to get Ellie's opinion as well."

"I hope you both like it." Nick started walking towards the door and spoke to him again,"I'm going to get something to eat, I'll tell Ellie where this room is while I'm there."

Isaac was looking through the closet when he said, "I can tell her, thank you though." Nick closed the door while Isaac took a few blankets and pillows out from the closet and set them down on the mats.

He sat down on one of the mats and opened up his RIG's computer and went through his video libraries and selected a video that wasn't named and played it. "Isaac, it's me." Nicole said while she sat down in a chair, "I wish I could talk to you. I'm sorry. I'm sorry about everything. I wish I could just… talk to someone." The room around Isaac started to flash orange, he looked slightly to his left and he saw Nicole sitting next to him.

"Why are you still here?" Isaac asked in a calm voice.

Nicole faced him and her eyes and mouth started to glow white, "Because you still can't let me go." She said in a demonic tone.

Isaac's vision of Nicole went away when Ellie made a video link to his RIG. She was still in the cafeteria sitting at a Japanese style table with Cynder and Nick, "Hey I'm going to come up to the room; can you send me a route?" She asked while Cynder and Nick were staring in amazement at how they could communicate so easily.

Isaac pushed a holographic on the projection, "Done." Isaac said.

"Do you want me to bring you anything?" Ellie asked.

"No thank you, I'm fine." He replied. "If you talk to Cynder, she can take you to a doctor and get your eye socket healed."

"I'll do that in the morning. I don' even think anything is open this late at night, i'll see you in a little bit." She said right before she ended the transmission.

Isaac got up and walked over to his tools and started pulling out some spirit gems and started trying to figure out how to convert it to an alternative form of ammunition.

**If you have any ideas, questions, or anything like that just review or PM me I am open to criticsm, I use it as a learning experience. Have a good one- USAF ParaJumper**


	5. A peaceful morning

**Got a new chapter for you, but first I'd like to say something to jedi orange. (Ahem) Stop asking Native Avenger and I to write your Cortex Command story he has already told you to stop asking him about but you still bother him about it. He is in the middle of writing three different series and I have alot of ROTC stuff and swim team, so neither of us have alot of time to do what your asking. If you want that story make it yourself. Also, Nick is my OC I do not claim anything else like TLOS or Dead Space obviously.**

Ellie got up from her table and turned on her locator that made a light blue path that led to Isaac. "What is that?" Cynder said in amazement.

Ellie chuckled at her reaction and answered, "This is called a locator; it makes a path that leads me to wherever I need to go, if I give it the right coordinates." She picked up her tools that she placed by the table she was eating at, "Good night everybody." She said to Spyro, Cynder, and Nick who were sitting at the same table.

"Good night." They replied as they got up and walked out of the cafeteria.

Ellie started to walk along the path that her locator gave her. She was being watched by several dragons as she walked along the hallway, she even frightened a blue dragon when she rounded the corner that led to the staircases. She didn't blame the dragon, if she saw a creature that was twice as tall as she was, she would probably have a similar reaction. Ellie walked past the dragon, trying not to make eye contact so it wouldn't get any more alarmed than it already was. 'What kind of temple is this?' Ellie thought as she walked up the spiral staircase. She activated her locator again and it led her down one of hallways on her left. When she arrived at the doorway to their room, she quietly opened the door just in case if Isaac was asleep, Ellie poked her head in and found Isaac working at one of the desk in the room.

Isaac was able to hear the door open, despite her efforts to be as quiet as she could. "How is the food here?" Isaac asked while he worked with the spirit gems that they found in the swamps earlier that day.

"It's alright." Ellie answered. "Were you able to find out if those crystals can be made into ammo?"

Isaac leaned back and tiredly stretched his arms over his head and said, "In fact I did, but since this obviously wasn't made for our tools, we can't use some of their secondary firing modes like your timed mine or my pulse grenades." Ellie walked up to the table and placed her tools and medpacks on the table next to Isaac's weapons. "There is a pillow and blanket over there by that mat; I'm guessing that they're beds."

"It's not going to be the most comfortable thing in the world but it's better than the swamp." Ellie said while she started to lie down on the mat. "So what do you think of this place?" Ellie asked.

Isaac put down the plasma cutter's clips that he was working on and walked over to one of the other mats. "I don't know what to think of it exactly." He laid down on his back and stared at the ceiling, trying to think of what to say. "It is a nice place, but sooner we get out of here the better." He rolled over onto his side and started to fall asleep. Ellie knew that something was not right with him; and she desperately wanted to find out what.

* * *

It was just after sunrise, when Isaac heard a knock at the door. "Isaac, are you awake?" Spyro asked.

Tiredly, Isaac sat up and rubbed his eyes, "I am now." He replied.

"I'm sorry that I woke you, but the guardians requested that you see them immediately." The dragon said.

Isaac grabbed his tools and attached them to his suit while he activated his helmet, which quickly took shape around his head. 'Just in case.' He thought.

The noise from his RIG woke up Ellie; she rolled over to face Isaac, who was still checking his weapons. "What are you doing?" She asked.

"Their guardians want to meet with me; I'm bringing this because I feel more comfortable knowing that I have them." He started walking towards the door while Ellie fell back asleep. The door creaked a little when Isaac opened the door to meet Spyro. "Let's go." The engineer said to the dragon.

"How did you sleep?" Spyro asked.

"I slept alright. How about you?" Isaac said as they approached the staircase and started to ascend the flights of stairs.

"I slept pretty well." As they climbed the stairs, Spyro looked up and down the stairs to check to see if anyone was down there. "I got you up early because I didn't want anybody to be disturbed by your presence." The dragon apologized. "The guardians will speak to them before they all go to class.

"Class?" Isaac questioned, wondering if he heard the dragon right, "This place is some kind of school?" he asked as they reached the top floor.

"It's more of an academy, but yes." Spyro said.

They arrived at the entrance to the pool of visions room; Spyro opened the door for Isaac and walked in behind him. When they walked into the room, the three guardians were sitting around the green pool waiting for Spyro and Isaac to arrive. "Ah, you're here." Terrador said. "Spyro, your excused."

Isaac walked up to the pool while Spyro walked out of the room. "If you don't mind we have a few questions for you." Volteer said as Isaac approached them.

"I do as well." Isaac responded. "First one: what kind of pool is this?" He said as he dipped his hand into the green water. "It doesn't look like any kind of water I've ever seen."

Volteer was observing Isaac's action while he was studying the pool. "This is the pool of visions; it allows us to see events that have happened in the past, present, and on rare occasions, the future." Terrador said. Volteer was very anxious to ask Isaac questions about where he came from, what kind of equipment he had with him, and how he arrived in the dragon realms.

Cyril noticed how uneasy Volteer was acting once the human entered the room; he was about to speak, but Isaac beat him to it, "So, what would you like to ask me?" He asked.

Volteer took his chance and ran with it, "What species are you? Where do you come from? What kind of suit it that?" The only reason that he stopped talking was because Terrador's paw held his snout closed firmly. Isaac laughed quietly behind his helmet while Terrador released his grip on Volteer once he finally calmed down. "I'm deeply sorry about that; I just got a little excited is all."

"That's fairly obvious." Isaac pointed out. "First off, Ellie and I are humans; a few days ago, we were both on a space colony called the sprawl, but we had to evacuate when an outbreak occurred." Isaac wasn't sure if he wanted to tell them about the necromorphs in case if they thought that they brought the infection with them. "Onto your third question, what I'm wearing is called the advance engineering RIG. It helps me while I'm on various engineering assignments out in space."

Volteer nodded while listening to Isaac, taking in as much information as he could. "I have a question." Terrador said. "What kind of infection were you referring to just a little while ago?"

'Fuck!' Isaac thought, not wanting to answer that, but he had no other choice and at least it wasn't like some of the doctors who interrogated him about what happened on the Ishimura. He was eyeing the pool as he remembered what the dragons said about it being able to look at past events, "Can this pool allow me to show you what happened?"

Cyril looked down at the pool and answered his question, "Of course, all you need to do is look into it and focus on what you want us to see." Isaac leaned into the pool and did as he was instructed.

As he gazed into the pool of visions, he tried to focus on when he was still locked up in the medical bay. It was a dark metal room with various glass-walled rooms, medical tools and instruments littered the ground. Isaac was lying on a table in a white straight jacket; he could faintly hear a voice calling his name, "Isaac. Isaac. Can you hear me?" Isaac opened his eyes and saw a young black man shining a flashlight into his eyes. There was the sound of something breaking down the hall; the man who woke him put his flashlight onto a strap that held it in place while he turned on a radio that he had on his vest. "Dania, I found Isaac Clarke. Repeat, I have him."

The guardians stared into the pool with interest as they observed the interior of the medical bay.

A female voice spoke from the radio the man had with Isaac, "Great work Franco. Be careful, he has been out a long time."

Franco was shaking as he tried to get Isaac onto his feet. "Ok steady, steady." He said while he lifted Isaac off of the table, Isaac started coughing from the dry, dusty air that was in the medical bay. "We have to get you out of this straight jacket."

Isaac was still trying to comprehend what was happening. "Where, where am I?" He asked. Franco was starting to hyperventilate when they heard the sound of breaking glass getting closer to them.

The guardians looked around the image, trying to see where the sound was coming from. "What was that?" Volteer asked and was soon hushed by Terrador who was trying to watch what Isaac had to show them.

Franco looked back at Isaac, fear covered his face. "Alright, I know that you're confused; but I can explain everything but you have to trust me. Listen, you're in terrible, terrible danger." Suddenly, a large scythe-like blade went through his chest and stopped just a few inches in front of Isaac's nose while a bat-like creature crawled up his back and stabbed him in the forehead with a blade extension that came out of his head.

All of the guardians jumped in shock when the monster killed Franco, but continued to watch what happened only a few days ago.

The creature took the blade out of Franco's head and crawled off to another part of the sprawl. Franco was still holding on to Isaac when he let out a moan as four tentacles were crawling out of his head. He twitched once as two arms with blades at the ends of them, grew out of his shoulder blades. The same tentacles were starting to crawl out of his nose and mouth while he brought his head back, letting his skin all off of his face and neck, revealing all of his muscles and tendons.

Cyril watched in horror as the monster brought his face just a few centimeters to Isaac's. The ice guardian could feel his food starting to go out the way it came in; he quickly shifted his body so that it wasn't facing everyone and vomited. All of the other guardians were oblivious to what Cyril just did.

Before the monster that used to be Franco tried kill Isaac, he quickly head butted the monster and started to run. "Franco?" Dania said through Isaac's RIG. "Franco what happened?" Several of the same type of monsters started to break through the glass walls around Isaac. "Isaac, if you can hear me just run!" He sprinted through the medical bay while the monsters tried to catch him. Isaac turned from corner to corner trying to find a way out; He almost tripped on a few wheelchairs that were in his way. He could see a doorway that led to a seemingly safe place; Isaac ran just a few feet through it before one of the monsters tackled him to the deck and stabbed him in his left shoulder. It was about to strike again but Isaac was able to get a foot underneath it and pushed it into the doorway as it closed, slicing it into two pieces.

Isaac decided that it was time to stop the vision when he noticed how disturbed the guardians looked. He stepped away from the pool and spoke, "That was what happened on the sprawl." He looked over to his right and saw Cyril wiping his mouth clean from his vomit. "Those things killed everything there; man, woman, or child, nobody survived." He said mournfully.

"That was, horrible." Cyril said trying to repress what he just witnessed. "Terrador, I'll inform the students that Isaac and Ellie will be staying with us." He said, trying to be excused.

Terrador noticed how uneasy Cyril was, "Of course." He turned to Isaac. "You and Ellie may stay as long as you like." Cyril walked out onto a balcony that was a part of the pool of visions room and took flight.

"Thank you." Isaac said.

Volteer still want to ask Isaac a few questions but wanted to wait for a little while before he asked. "I'd like to ask you a few more questions regarding your technology but I'm fairly certain that you are hungry. The cafeteria is open at this moment if you wish to eat."

Isaac nodded in thanks, "Thank you Volteer, I'll meet with you this afternoon with Ellie." Isaac left the room and closed the door behind him. 'That went well he thought,' He thought while he started a video link with Ellie as he walked down the stairs. "Ellie, can you hear me?" He asked.

"Yes, I can hear you." She said. In the video it looked like she was out in some kind of courtyard that was filled with dragons of various sizes and colors. "Cyril just started introducing me to all of the students here." She paused for a second to look at the dragons and faced Isaac again. "So how did it go with the meet the others?" She asked.

"It went better than I expected." Isaac reached the base of the stairs and realized that he had no idea where he was going. "Can you tell me where the cafeteria is? I still have no idea where I'm going."

Ellie pressed a button to the side of the video feed. "I've sent you a route to me, I'll meet you there."

She ended the video feed while Isaac activated his locator that made a blue path that led out a door to his right. The hallways were empty for the most part except for the occasional dragon here and there. The locator led him out into the court yard that Ellie was just in but it was empty. 'They must have gone to breakfast.' Isaac thought. When he went into another building that his locator led him to, but this building wasn't empty, there were about one hundred dragons that were crowded into a circle. The crowd of dragons were chanting, "Fight. Fight. Fight." Isaac looked over the heads and wings of some of the taller dragons and saw a blue dragon being double-teamed by a large yellow dragon and another large silver dragon, and they were winning.

'This isn't a fair fight.' Isaac thought while he broke through the crowds to stop the fight.

**If you have any questions or comments or ideas just spend a little bit of time to review or pm me. I might just update this weekly unless if I have more time.**


	6. level six

**Sorry about the late update, I've had alot of ROTC things going on like our promotion test and boards that took all week. Here is the next chapter-**

The fight wasn't going well for the blue dragon; Isaac tried to move as fast as he could so that no one would get severely hurt. As he moved in, the silver dragon had the blue one in a choke hold that allowed the yellow dragon to repeatedly punch him in the side and face. When Isaac broke through the crowd and into the center, the audience was dead silent; the yellow dragon stopped when he noticed the lack of chants, he turned to his left to see Isaac staring at him with his ripper in hand. "You must be that fucking human Cyril told us about." The dragon started to walk closer to Isaac in a battle stance. "Walk away now or else I'll kill you like I'm about to do to this little bitch." He said, referring to the blue dragon that was still in a head lock.

The crowd was anxiously waiting to see what would happen between to two. Isaac stood in silence, waiting to see what the dragon would do. 'Ok Isaac,' He thought to himself. 'Watch out for the claws, the tail, and the elemental breath.'

"Well?" The dragon shouted at Isaac, trying to intimidate him. "What is it going to be?" The dragon stepped forward but stopped dead in his tracks when a blue laser sight appeared in the middle of his head.

Part of the crowd let out a gasp when Isaac aimed his ripper at the yellow dragon; the others were interested to see what Isaac could do to him. "I'm giving you fifteen second for you and your friend to fuck off. Fifteen, fourteen…"

The yellow dragon could hear the saw blade rotating within the tool; he knew that Isaac would win the fight but didn't want to look weak in front of the crowd. "I'm not afraid of you." He lied.

"Ten, nine, eight." Isaac counted down while slowly walking closer to the dragon while staying on guard. "Seven, six..." Isaac said.

The yellow dragon looked at his friend and they decided he had enough. The silver dragon released his hold on the blue dragon and walked away with his friend. "This isn't over you little shit. Let's go Zephyr." The yellow dragon said to the silver dragon while walking away.

Isaac approached the young dragon while putting away his tool. "Are you ok?" he asked.

"Yeah, I think so." The dragon said. Isaac looked over his bruised eye to make sure that it wasn't damaged.

"You'll be fine, it's just a bruise." He said while he stood back up. "Come on, let's get something to eat." Isaac walked with the blue dragon to the cafeteria where he spotted Ellie sitting at a table with Spyro Cynder and Nick. "My name is Isaac." He said to the blue dragon.

"I'm Vandal." He responded. "Those guys back there were Victor and Zephyr; they have been making fun of me and doing stuff like what just happened for a long time because I'm not a good fighter." Vandal hung his head in sadness.

Isaac felt sympathy for him and put a hand on his shoulder. "There is nothing wrong with that, and if they try to do something like that again I'll be there." They walked up to a line that had various foods out for people to sever themselves; Isaac grabbed a tray and put some blue colored eggs on it along with a weird looking kind of meat. 'I sure hope that this is edible.' He thought while he turned to Vandal, "Let me help you with your tray." He offered.

"Thank you." Vandal said. Isaac lifted his left hand and activated his kinesis module and lifted his tray while holding his in the other hand. Vandal's eyes grew wide as he watched the tray levitate before him. "How do you do that?" He asked.

"It's, complicated." The engineer said. They both walked to the table that Ellie reserved for them. They sat down and Isaac handed Vandal his tray and noticed that Ellie had a new eye patch that was sealed around the socket. "So, you saw a doctor."

"I did. They cleaned the wound and sealed this patch around it." Ellie continued eating her eggs and took a drink of water from a cup that was next to her tray. Isaac deactivated his helmet and received a look from Vandal and some of the other students, which he ignored. In the cafeteria, they didn't have utensils for them to eat with because it was meant for dragons. Isaac ripped off a small part of the meat and took a bite out of it; it tasted a lot like beef, it wasn't the best that but it certainly wasn't the worst. "So, what kind of classes do you take at this academy?" Ellie said to the dragons sitting at the table.

Cynder finished chewing eating what was in her mouth. "It all depends on what we have selected to do for the city when we've finished school. Spyro and I are joining the military division, so we are taking thing that others are not like hunting and survival and combat." She continued eating so that Vandal and Nick could explain what they do.

"I'm into mechanics, specially engineering for the city's defensive weapons." Vandal said.

Isaac thought to himself, 'I'm starting to like this kid.' "I'm also an engineer." He said.

Vandal turned to face the human. "You are?" He asked.

"That's what I've been doing for years." Isaac said.

Ellie looked at Isaac and Vandal. "Nerds." She said to herself while rolling her eyes. "So what are you studying?" She asked Nick.

"I'm in the field medical division. That's why I was out in the forest with Spyro and Cynder when we meet you." Nick said to Ellie. She noticed that Isaac looked like he was worrying about something. "What's wrong Isaac?" She asked.

Isaac looked up from his tray to face the dragon, "It's nothing." He said. 'I'll see you later; I need to go do something." Isaac stood up from the table and grabbed his tray. He walked over to a stand to throw away food and to place trays for cleaning, after he place his tray in the designated area he activated his RIG's helmet and walked out into one of the courtyards.

Isaac walked through a courtyard full of dragons who were talking about what they were going to do after school and different rumors that were going around. The courtyard started to flash orange and red while symbols were moving along the walls and ground. Niccole was sitting on a bench next to two dragons just staring at the couple. 'Not another vision.' Isaac thought.

Niccole turned her blood-stained face to look at Isaac. "You think you're accepted here?" She asked in a sarcastic voice. "

"I thought I was done with you." He said in a quiet tone so that he wouldn't raise alarm to everyone in the courtyard, knowing that they couldn't see his vision. "I'm telling you one last time, leave now." Isaac threatened.

Niccole vanished from her seat on the bench and appeared a few feet in front of Isaac, "You think you can hide from your enemies?" she screeched. The courtyard faded into a slight darker shade of red; the dragons that were once hanging around each other were now bloody- dismembered corpses that were scattered about the area. "They will find you and kill everyone here! And there will be nothing you can do about it!" She screamed as the courtyard returned to normal state. The mutilated bodies that littered the area were gone and the students returned to their normal selves.

* * *

The group at the breakfast table was just finishing up their food when Nick asked Ellie about something that was on her mind. "Ellie, are you and Isaac a couple?" The fear dragon asked.

The human finished her glass of water and set the cup on the table. "No and I'm sure that it's not a good idea for either of us." She said while she started to clean up her area.

Nick was not satisfied by her answer, "Why isn't it a good idea?"

"I'd rather not talk about it." Ellie answered, not wanting to recall what happened to her on the sprawl. "So what class do you take first?" She asked the dragons at her table.

"Spyro and I have to go through intermediate tactics first while Nick goes to biology." Cynder said.

"I go through math first then carpentry next." Vandal said as he stood up from the table. "I have to go now; I'll see you later today." Vandal waved goodbye to his friends at the table and exited the cafeteria.

Cynder turned to face Spyro, "We should probably be leaving as well; class will start soon."

"Ok, let's go." Spyro said.

Ellie watched the dragons leave the cafeteria and go to class. 'Well, I've got some free time. I might as well explore this academy.' She thought to herself as she picked up her Plasma cutter with the modified ammo, along with her javelin gun and started walking towards the courtyard. The area was almost empty of students except for those who were running late, Ellie walked to one of the building across from the courtyard. The structure was about seventy-five feet tall and twice as wide with two sculptures of fighting dragons in front of the entrance. 'It must be some kind of training center." Ellie thought.

She opened the front doors and walked in to find about twelve dragons fighting wooden training dummies that were armed with wooden clubs. There was a large black dragon standing to the side, watching the students train. She walked up to the dragon to introduce herself. "Hello, I'm Ellie; I just arrived here yesterday and I thought that I would have a look around." She said.

The dragon turned from his students to face the human. "It's a pleasure to meet you; my name is Saber, I am the combat instructor." He said humbly. "Cyril told me about you and your friend." He looked around to make sure that no one was listening, "Even about what happened to the place you were previously at."

Ellie's eyes grew wide, "How did he find out?" She asked.

"They used the pool of visions, a device that can allow us to see into the past, present and future, to look at what happened at that horrible place." Saber continued to observe his students as they fought the practice targets.

They both watched in silence for a few minutes before Ellie spoke, "Is it alright if I try for a little while?" She hoped that she could see if Isaac's plasma energy alternative would work or not.

Saber looked at her with a confused expression. "Are you sure?" He asked.

"Positive." Ellie replied as she walked to one of the practice areas. "Are there any kind of difficulty stages?" Ellie wanted a challenge.

"Yes. There are ten different levels; I'll put it at one for now and we will see how it goes from there." Saber said.

He walked up to the controls that were on the wall, he was about to start the exercise but Ellie interrupted him. "Can you put it at level five?" She asked.

Saber turned to face her. "Are you serious? I don't think that it's a good idea." He said.

"Your right." Ellie replied. "Put it at six." The other dragons in the room noticed Ellie about to fight and took interest. Soon Ellie was surrounded by about fifteen different dragons that watched her eagerly.

Saber rolled his eyes at her request. 'It won't be my fault if she gets hurt.' He thought to himself. Saber hit one of the controls and thirteen apes, six small and seven large, surrounded the human. Ellie equipped her plasma cutter and turned on its sights while taking aim at one of the small apes. She squeezed the trigger and decapitated one of the charging targets; its body hit the ground and slid to her feet before she fired two more shots at another one, killing it as well. 'What kind of weapons are those?' Saber asked himself.

The plasma cutter's ammo readout read eleven. 'Lucky I found those power nodes that gave it a higher ammo capacity.' Ellie thought. She had killed another small and large target with four more shots from the spirit gem ammo, which gave it more cutting power but was a lot more brittle and couldn't do as much damage if she hit the torso. One of the small apes jumped on her back and tried to bring her on the ground; Ellie brought her plasma cutter to her back and pushed it underneath its stomach and used the target's weight as a counter-balance to toss it over her shoulder. Luckily, another ape was charging at her at the time and was about to slash at her, but was blocked by the small ape that Ellie unintentionally used at a meat shield. She saw the opening that the attacking ape gave her, she thruster her plasma cutter into the ape's stomach and fired two shots into it. There were only five more shots in the current clip, 'No time to reload.' She thought. The ape was trying to recover from the crystals in its chest, with a quick pull of the trigger, Ellie ended its attempt.

There were two more small apes and five large ones. 'She is doing better than I expected.' Saber thought to himself.

'Three shots left.' Ellie thought to herself. Another small ape charged her but was greeted by a shot to the neck. Ellie used the last two shots to slow down a large ape that was getting too close. She equipped her javelin that had a modified magazine count that could hold seven spears and increase damage; she turned on the sights and took aim at the stunned ape and fired at its chest. The last small ape made the foolish decision to jump at Ellie from the front; she brought the sights to its head and fried, the ape flew through the air with a spear sticking out of its head and was pinned to the wall behind the crowd of dragons.

When the student turned back to face Ellie, she had already killed another ape leaving two left. Ellie knew that if she missed any of them she would not have any time to reload; she quickly took aim in between them at their feet and fired. The students looked at where she fired in confusion until they saw the spear spark and release large bolts of blue electricity, killing both of them. The dragons cheered as Ellie walked towards while reloading her tools. "How was that?" She asked.

Saber was about to speak, until Volteer stepped in, "That was marvelous." The guardian said.

"When did you get here?" Saber asked.

Volteer turned from Ellie to face Saber, "Not too long ago, luckily I was able to witness our guest's fighting abilities." He faced Ellie again, "Where did you learn to fight like that?"

Ellie finished reloading her weapons before she answered his question. "Back on the sprawl, where Isaac and I were before; it wasn't called fighting." She stopped to take in a breath before she finished her sentence. "It was called surviving."

**Once again, i'm sorry about how long it took to update. If you have any thoughts or ideas about THIS STORY please review or pm me.**


	7. Silence of our friends

**Just so its clear, Vandal, Nick, Victor, Zephyr, and Saber are my OC. Enjoy**

Isaac wondered the hallways for about an hour; he was trying to repress the memory of what just happened in the courtyard. 'Earth Gov would never be able to find us here.' He tried to convince himself. The hallways were empty except for the occasional student that needed to go to the bathroom or staff member that was running an errand. Isaac was searching for Volteer, he had already searched the pool of visions room, but it was empty. 'I might as well check out the markets.'

The market area was not too far away from the temple so he decided that he would take the long way so he could do some sightseeing. He searched the hallways to find a way out of the main building but wound up making a complete circle and ended up in the same hallway. 'Where the crap is an exit?' he thought to himself.

Isaac turned and started to go down another path that hopefully leads to one of the courtyards. "Isaac!" A voice shouted from behind him. "Isaac!" It called again. He turned again to see Vandal running up towards him. When he caught up to him he stopped to catch his breath. "So… where are you going?" The dragon asked.

"I'm going to go the markets and take a look around. You want to come with me or do you have another class to take?" He asked the dragon.

"I don't have another class until later today, so I'm free for the time being." He wanted to try to get away for the academy so he could avoid Victor and Zephyr.

Isaac looked back at the hallway and started walking. "Let's go." He said to Vandal. They walked around aimlessly for about five minutes before they made it to a door that lead outside. 'Finally.' Isaac thought.

Vandal led the way to the markets and decided to ask a few questions. "How did you become an engineer?" He asked curiously.

Isaac recalled how unfairly his mother gave most of their money to the Church of Unitology, which prevented him from going to an engineering academy. "My dad was an engineer long before I was, he left my mother and I before I could even get to know him. Even though he did that, I still decided to go into his profession; I got an education in electrical and mechanical engineering and was selected to go to attend a prominent engineering academy." Vandal had an interested expression on his face, but it quickly disappeared once Isaac finished his next sentence. "But my mother obviously thought that my education wasn't that important; she spent our family funds to get a large title in her religion."

Vandal felt sorry for Isaac, he knew that he would want to get as best of an education as possible, but to have it taken away by someone that he thought cared about him must have been the worst. "I'm sorry Isaac." He said.

They both walked in silence until they arrived at the markets. They could smell all the different food stands that had a variety of different fruits, meats, vegetables, and pastries. They stopped to try some of the different samples that one of the stands had; a mid-aged dragon handed them a tray that had some smoked fish, Vandal ate one without hesitation while Isaac deactivated his helmet and held it up to his nose to get a better smell. Isaac wasn't a big fan of fish but when he took a bite of it he could taste a little bit of sweetness followed by a salty aftertaste. They both thanked the dragon and continued to explore the area. 'I wish that they had something that I'm familiar with.' He thought.

They walked up to a bakery that had loafs of red colored bread on a counter. There was a mole working there, she was rolling out dough that he was about to use to make another batch of pastries. "Take one; and if you like it I'll sell you ten for twelve coins." The baker said. Isaac took one of the small loafs and broke it in half and gave one of them to Vandal who took a small bite of it. Isaac watched the dragon eat the rest of it and decided to take a bite of it; he soon found out that they had two entirely different tastes when it came to food. The bread didn't have a pleasant taste to it; it had a very sour flavor to it and a funny smell. Isaac wanted to spit it out as soon as he tried it but didn't want to insult the baker so he had to finish eating the foul bread.

Once they were done looking at the food stands, Isaac decided to visit a blacksmith to see if he could get more ripper ammo. There weren't very many shops in there are but Isaac didn't have many options; they walked up to an open shop that was owned a mole and a green dragon, the mole was busy sharpening a variety of different weapons ranging from small daggers to long swords. They were looking at the different weapons and armor that hung from the shelves and ceiling while the green dragon was helping a customer pick out a set of leather shoulder plates. Vandal walked up to the engineer who was holding a short sword, trying to get a feel for it. "Isaac." Vandal said. Isaac turned to face Vandal to give him his full attention. "It seemed like at breakfast today, that you were shunning Nick. Why?"

Isaac put down the sword on the hooks that were meant to suspend it on the display wall and face Vandal once more. "If I tell you, you must promise me that you will not mention it to anyone that means Spyro, Cynder, Ellie, and especially Nick; is that understood?" Isaac tried to make him as clear as possible while giving his friend instruction.

"Yes." Vandal replied.

Isaac took in a deep breath and was about tell Vandal about Nicole but was cut off when the green dragon approached them. "Hello, is there anything that I can help you with?"

The human was relieved that he didn't have to tell Vandal about his dead girlfriend at the moment. "Yes there is." He said to the shop owner. Isaac unclipped his ripper from his armor and opened the slide that held its blades; he took one of them out and handed it to the shop owner. "I'd like to know if you could make me some of these."

The shop owner twirled it around in his paws, inspecting it closely. "I should be able to but we need to talk about how many you need and about price."

Isaac knew that the dragon wouldn't take any of his type of currency but knew that with how advanced he was that he would be able to negotiate something between them. "How about a trade?" he suggested while he pulled out two blank audio logs that he kept in his inventory. Isaac pressed the record button that was on one of its sides and started talking. "This is an audio log; it records messages that you can leave for someone to give them instructions or for whatever you need." Isaac pressed the stop button on the audio log and pressed play and watched as it replayed what Isaac had just said. "I'll give you two of these for ten of the saw blades." Isaac offered.

"Deal." The shop owner said. "I will be able to have it done in two days at around noon, just visit my shop when you are able to." The dragon carried the saw blade that he would use as a template to his work area and set it down on a table.

The pair left the shop and Isaac immediately noticed a red banner that a few workers were setting up along with a few more decorations that they were placing along some of the shops. "What is this for?" Isaac asked Vandal.

A sad expression swept his face as he spoke. "They are having a celebration to honor those who died in the war against Malefor, especially the former fire guardian, Ignitus."

Isaac didn't know anything about the war that he was talking about but knew that it must have been devastating to their city considering all the construction that was happening to some of the buildings. "We should go back to the temple before your next class starts. I'll answer your question that you had for me in the shop along the way." Isaac was thinking about where he should start with his explanation about Nicole as they left the markets. "A few years ago my girlfriend went to work on a planet cracker vassal called the Ishimura as a senior medical officer. Not too long after she left, I received a call saying that said that they had a total blackout to the ship's power; fearing the worst, I volunteered to go on a repair mission to help them." Vandal was listening with interest as Isaac continued his story. "Before we left, I was given a message from Nicole. I played it over and over for who knows how long, but for some reason, I never watched it to the end. Once we arrived there, we found out that the ship's crew had already been slaughtered by these things called necromorphs."

They rounded a corner along their way to the temple but stopped when they saw Zephyr vandalizing a stand that was unattended. Vandal wanted to keep walking away but Isaac knew that this had to stop. Isaac walked up behind the wind dragon and equipped his plasma cutter. Zephyr saw the two out of the corner of his eye and turned to face them. "This doesn't concern you now leave before you get hurt." He said to Vandal.

Isaac stepped between the two and held his weapon in hand. "Oh yeah? Well your bitch isn't here to back you up." He taunted. "Walk away now and tell your friend to fuck off or else." Isaac said threateningly.

"Or else what?" Zephyr mocked.

Isaac lofted his plasma cutter and turned on the sights. "You don't know what this does, do you?" The wind dragon continued to star at Isaac, acting as though he wasn't intimidated by his threat. "It fires a cohesive pulse-stream of ionized plasma, when it hits its target, it will penetrate it using focused jet of superheated matter." Zephyr's face had a confused expression as Isaac finished his sentence. Isaac decided to dumb it down for him, "Basically, It will cut right through you. So, here is my offer: leave now and I won't have to use this." Isaac raised his tool so that the sights lined up to Zephyr's left arm.

The fear that came from the dragon could be seen from a mile away as the blue dots ran across his arm. Isaac knew that if the dragon continued to be as stubborn, he would have to shoot him. Without giving him time to react, Isaac pointed the plasma cutter inches away from Zephyr's feet and fired into the ground. The dragon jumped in shock as the bolt almost hit his paw; he jumped behind the vandalized stand as Isaac fired two more times at him into the ground and took off running.

"Was that necessary?" Vandal asked. "You scared the crap out of the both of us."

"No." Isaac answered. "But it was the funniest shit that has happened to me all day."

Vandal chuckled to himself at Isaac's comment. "We better get going I'll tell the shop owner what happened to his stand after my class." They continued walking down the road towards the temple when Vandal's curiosity got the better of him. "Why is it that you helped me earlier today?" He asked.

"You never met me before and yet you went out of your way to help me."

Isaac thought for a moment before he spoke. "There was a good man who once said: 'In the end, we don't remember the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.' He meant that we remember what people could have done but didn't do."

Vandal nodded understandingly. "Thank you by the way."

"No problem." Once they arrived at the temple, they said goodbye and Vandal left to go to his next class while Isaac tried to look for Volteer. He went into the main building to search there first. The hallways were highly crowded from the students trying to push their way to their next class. Isaac was trying to make his way through the crowd of dragons, whose sizes ranged from waist high to almost as tall as his chest, when he locked eyes with a familiar face, Nick.

Isaac immediately turned around and walked off into the other direction but couldn't avoid being spotted by her. "Isaac!" She called out to him. "Wait for me!" Isaac walked at a faster pace out into the courtyard to get away from the fear dragon and immediately tripped on something. He looked up to see Zephyr standing next to him.

"Sorry." He mocked as he walked off. If Isaac wasn't trying to avoid a conversation with Nick he would show this prick a thing or two.

Nick ran up to his side and helped him onto his feet. "Are you ok?" She asked.

Isaac was about halfway up when he the courtyard began to glow a dark shade of orange. He looked up and flinched when he saw Nicole standing just a few inches in front of him. "You couldn't save me, Stross, Hammond, Kendra, or anyone on the sprawl." She whispered into his ear.

"Get the fuck away from me Nicole." Isaac said.

"What?" Nick asked in disbelief.

**Just to be clear to an unnamed reviewer from another story, my name is USAF Parajumer not Parachutejumper. Please favorite, review, or PM me and i'll have the next chapter within a week.**


	8. Its all my fault

**Sorry that this one is a bit late, i have not had any time during the week to write this. To Zeus, although you do have a good idea, Isaac is the only one that has dementia, not everyone else. On with the story**

"What makes you think that you can protect anyone here?" Nicole said to Isaac, trying to make him feel as though all of their deaths rested on his shoulders.

"Stay away from me Nicole!" Isaac said out loud.

Nick wasn't sure what she did that would make Isaac say something like that to her. Tears started to well up into her eyes as she ran back into the hallways, pushing her way through the crowds of dragons, trying to conceal her face.

Nicole stood up to her full height, held out one finger and said, "You have One month before they come for you! One month for this city to prosper!"

Isaac shook his head and looked around the courtyard, trying to see if anyone was able to hear him. He noticed that Nick was no longer with him; he spun around again and tried to search for the fear dragon. "Nick?" he called. She was nowhere to be found. "Nick?" he called again. Again, nobody answered. Isaac decided to back track into the hallway to try to see where she went. While he walked through the hallways, several dragons were glaring at him while he walked for a reason that he didn't know about. 'What happened during that vision?' he wondered. After a little while, he decided to cut off the search for her and decided to continue on his way to find Volteer. The hallways seemed familiar and he was able to find his way to the stairwell without the help of his locator. He started to ascend the stairwell when he heard a loud boom throughout the area, 'That sounded like it came from the pool of visions room.' Isaac reached the top of the flight of stairs and approached the door that led to the pool of visions room. He leaned his head up against the door to see if he could hear anybody. When he did he could he the sound of Nick crying. 'Oh fuck.' Isaac thought as he knocked on the door.

"Come in." he heard Cyril say in stern tone. Isaac walked in and immediately had a glare shot at him by Cyril who had nick under his wing; Volteer and Terrador were with them around the pool, trying to comfort her. "Just the man I wanted to see." He said with an angry voice. "I want to know why you openly cursed at my foster child without being provoked."

'Double fuck.' Isaac thought. "If you would just allow me to explain-"

Nick pushed Cyril away from her and ran up to Isaac and yelled, "You have no good explanation! I went up to you just to ask you something and you tried to get away from me! Then I tried to help you up because you fell, and then you tell me to leave."

Isaac allowed her to yell at him so she could blow off some steam before he spoke, "Look, Nick."

"Don't 'look Nick' me! Just shut up; I hate you!" she screamed and pushed Isaac out of the way and ran out of the door.

Isaac turned towards the guardians. "Let me explain."

"I'm listening." Cyril said with a glare.

Isaac took in a deep breath and started his story. "Right now, I am suffering from something called dementia."

Volteer eyes grew wide when he cut into his story. "Dementia?" He said.

Terrador immediately stopped Volteer before he was able to continue, "Please Volteer; let him speak."

Isaac waited for a few seconds to see if they were finished talking. "Before I was on the Sprawl, I volunteered to go onto a repair mission to a ship that had a communications blackout, called the USG Ishimura. I volunteered because someone who I cared about was on that ship. And when I arrived there, nobody was to be found. We were in the middle of assessing what was wrong with the ship when we were ambushed by those same creatures that I showed you in that pool." He said, gesturing to the pool of visions. "The ship was in orbit over a planet called Aegis VII. We were able to find the source of the outbreak, it was caused by something called the Marker; it caused the crew to see hallucinations that drove them mad and they started to either commit suicide or to kill each other. It did the same to me, it started to give me hallucinations of my girlfriend who was the reason that I volunteered to go. Before I left the ship, I found out that she had already been dead long before I even arrived there."

Cyril's expression still hadn't changed since he started talking. "How is this relevant to what you said to my daughter?" He asked in an angry tone.

"Because my dementia is still giving me hallucinations about my girlfriend; and that's what happened in the courtyard." Isaac argued.

Cyril shouted. "Then why is it that you yelled at her to, 'get the fuck away from you?"

"Calm yourselves!" Terrador boomed. "Isaac," He said calmly. "why is it that you said that to her?"

Isaac took another breath and said, "I was talking to my girlfriend from my hallucination."

"Then why did you call Nick by name?" Terrador asked.

"My girlfriend's name is Nicole." Isaac said sorrowfully.

Cyril frown slowly faded from his face as he started to relax his tightened muscles. "Well if you love your girlfriend so much then why is it that you were telling her to go away?" Cyril questioned.

Isaac answered, "Because in my hallucinations, she has tried to kill me several times. The first time, she tried to stab me with a syringe. The second time she tried to break my neck. And the most recent time was when I was trying to destroy the marker that was on the sprawl."

Volteer nodded his head understandingly before he spoke. "Well, some cases of dementia have been curable; I will look through our medical books to see what I can do."

"Thank you Volteer." Isaac said. "I feel as though I owe you for the kindness that you've shown Ellie and I, is there something that I can do to help with anything?" He asked.

"I think that we could find something, but I believe that you owe Nick more than you owe us." Cyril said calmly. "I would allow her to have some time to herself before you do anything though."

"I will; thank you." Isaac said. He left the room pondering on what the guardians had told him. 'Do they really believe me?' he wondered. 'Can Volteer really make her go away?' He walked over to the stair well and decided to walkout onto one of the balconies on the top floor. It was a small area that had two chairs and was closed off by a black rail. The sun was starting to go down at the end of the long day. Isaac leaned up against the rail and looked around at the city below. The streets were mildly crowded with civilians starting to pack up their stands for the night while others were setting up decorations for the celebration that Vandal told him about earlier.

Isaac could hear foot steps behind him, he turned and to his surprise, Spyro was standing right behind him. "Hey Isaac." He said. "Nick told me what happened."

Isaac turned back to face the city. "It was a miss understanding, I didn't mean to say that to her I was… having a vision from someone." He said.

"A vision from whom?" Spyro asked.

"My girlfriend whose name is Nicole." Isaac answered.

"What did she have to say?"

"I'd rather not say." Isaac said. He tried to change the subject by asked about the celebration that the civilians were setting up. "So what exactly are they setting up for?"

Spyro walked up next to Isaac by the rail. "About two years ago, we had a war against a purple dragon that was called the Dark Master. Ignitus, one of the former guardians, Cynder and I had to cross a belt of fire to be able to reach the Dark Master. He sacrificed himself for us to be able to get across." Isaac could hear the sadness in his voice as he continued. "So we are having a celebration to honor those who have died in the war."

Isaac rested a comforting hand on his shoulder. "I know how it feels to have someone close to you die. You're not alone."

"Thank you." Spyro said. "You missed lunch today. You want to join the rest us for dinner?" He offered.

Isaac removed his hand from Spyro's shoulder. "That sounds good. Let's go." They left the balcony and walked down the stairs together. The hallways had several dragons that were also going to the mess hall. They entered the cafeteria and went over to the severing line and got their food. They stood by the end of the line and searched through the crowds to find where their friends were sitting at. Isaac was able to point out where they were at when Vandal flagged them down. They walked over to the table and took their seats. At the table were Vandal, Cynder, Ellie, and Nick who was giving Isaac the cold shoulder. 'Just give her some time; she'll be better after a while.' He thought to himself. The group ate in silence for the first few minutes before Isaac decided start a conversation. "So Cynder, how were your classes today?"

"They were alright." She responded.

Ellie finished her food and looked at Isaac, "Can I talk to you for a minute?" She Got up from her seat and motioned for him to follow. She led him to a secluded corner of the cafeteria and said to him, "Nick told me everything; I know about Nicole and how you have been having trouble with your dementia, but we just got here, don't do anything that would make us get removed from this place. Like how you almost killed that one dragon on your walk with Vandal."

Isaac reflected on what she had just said. If he had hit Zephyr he would have been banished from this place along with Ellie. "How did you find out about Nicole?"

"You need to turn off your audio link sometimes." She said as though it were obvious. "Just…be more careful. Ok?"

"OK." He said. He hoped that he would be able to keep his promise.

**Well i hope that staying up last night paid off. If you have any ideas for this story than please review or pm me. And dose anyone think that i'm lacking any interaction between the characters? If so please let me know.**


	9. Lives spent or wasted

**Well, i'm glad that I was able to get this chapter out a day early. In this chapter I go into a bit more detail about Victor and his personallity. Enjoy... or else.**

In the past week, Isaac hasn't had any visions from Nicole, he didn't know if his dementia was starting to go away or is starting to go dormant. He also decided to try to apologize to Nick, but every time that he would try to talk to her, she would completely ignore him. Isaac wanted to research more over the city of Warfang to learn more about its history. So he went to the library that was in the temple and sat down at a table with Vandal. The ice dragon had agreed to teach him how to read their language in exchange for training in electrical engineering. Isaac told him that he would more than likely never be able to use it because there wasn't any technology in the city that would need it, but Vandal was persistent and Isaac soon gave in. Vandal picked out a history book and sat down with Isaac and started reading over both of the wars with the Dark Master; but Isaac thought that it would be best to go over the second war more than the first. He also looked at a book about the weapons that they would use, the major battles that they won, and the history of the guardians. After they finished the book, they left the library to go to Isaac's room so that he could teach Vandal about electrical engineering. They traveled through the hallways with ease to the stairwell and up to Isaac's room, during the past two days he spent a few hours putting different paths into his locator. Isaac held open the door for Vandal as he entered his room. Vandal could clearly see twelve sharpened titanium rods that Isaac set out along with complex-looking electrical charges, which looked like any other motherboard on a computer, which could be attached to them.

Vandal was trying to retain his excitement while he inspected the electrical equipment that was set out for them to work with. "Can we start now?" He asked.

Isaac chuckled behind his helmet. He recalled himself in his early childhood acting the same way at Christmas when he ran downstairs from his bedroom to find a tree that was full of colorfully wrapped gifts. Isaac walked to Ellie's desk and picked up her javelin gun and ejected its clip. He picked up the cartridge and pulled out one of the spears. "We are going to be making these."

"What are they used for?" Vandal asked.

"They are called javelin spears." Isaac put the spear down on the desk and grabbed the javelin gun. "They are fired out of a javelin gun like this one as a spear. They can easily pin an enemy to several different surfaces and when you flip a certain switch, a signal will be sent to the spear that will electrify it, damaging any nearby targets." He set down the gun and took a seat by the rods. "We are going to be setting the electric charge and testing the signal." Isaac grabbed one of the rectangular charges and removed a safety clip that was blocking the circuit and attached it to one of the rods that had a slot in it where the charge would fit as if it were a puzzle piece. "After we place the charge, we attach these two red wires into their slots and then we test the signal."

"How do we do that?" Vandal asked.

Isaac grabbed the javelin gun and flipped a switch that was on the side while he held down a certain button that was on the charge. "While I hold down the test button on the javelin it will connect with any spear that is within range that also has its test button activated." Suddenly a blue light started to slowly blink on the circuit board of the charge. "We do this so that the gun recognizes which spear was fired from it." Isaac let go of the test buttons and placed a panel over the charge and snapped it into place. "Once we activate the switch on the gun it will send a signal that will activate the charge."

"Can I try?" Vandal asked. Isaac motioned towards the equipment and let him go for it.

The dragon carefully picked up one of the charges and placed it into the slot of one of the titanium rods and was about to attach the wires to it when Isaac stopped him. "You need to remove the black safety clip on the side of it." He corrected. Vandal noticed the clip and cut it with his sharp talon. Next he pinched both of the wires and inserted them into their slots. 'He is a good learner.' Isaac thought as he watched Vandal test the signal. 'I wonder if there is anything else that I can use to teach him about electrical engineering.'

Spyro was trying not to fall asleep during Terrador's military tactics class. There were about fifteen dragons including himself, Cynder, and Victor in the training room. Terrador had a large sheet out in front of him that had aerial drawing of a small bunker that was in the middle of a field. He placed a few model cannons that were carved out of wood by the drawing of the bunker along with small wooden carvings of. Surrounding the bunker there were several wooden chips that represented foot soldiers, along with several other cannons that were along the outer edge that were spread out in uneven numbers across the map. It was a defense exercise that Terrador was setting up for his students. It had been almost fifteen minutes since one of the student started to try to establish a half decent defense with his limited amount of assets. Spyro was able to point out about ten mistakes with every placement that he made with literally one eye closed. All of the students were forced to do the same exercise but only six of them have gone so far. When the dragon had finally given up the exercise, Terrador called up Spyro who was almost completely asleep; Spyro did not hear Terrador call his name but soon jumped to attention when Terrador yelled his name. "Spyro!" he boomed. The purple dragon jumped up from his seat and was a little embarrassed when he noticed all the students staring at him. "It is your turn to complete the exercise." Terrador said.

Spyro walked up to the sheet and took into account of the placement and quantity of enemies. He noticed that there wasn't any enemy type that would be able to defend from any sort of air attack. "Well the first thing that I would do is establish suppression fire on their ground forces." Spyro moved the model cannons into a half circle formation. "And since they don't have any sort of aerial defense, I would send out half of my dragons to destroy as many of their cannons as possible."

Terrador removed half of the enemies' cannons and two of the dragons that Spyro had sent out. Spyro was about to make his next move until Terrador took away about a third of Spyro's cannons and said, "Some of your cannons had technical difficulties and need repairs, you must stall the enemy until they are operational."

Spyro hadn't even considered his equipment breaking; then again, the only time that he had seen a cannon stop working was when it was completely destroyed. Terrador removed about a fourth of the enemy's infantry and sat back down to watch his next move. Some of the students were already asleep by the time that Spyro started, including Cynder, but Victor was watching closely as his friend continued his exercise. "How am I supposed to stall them?" Spyro asked.

"You could send some of your dragons to fight them." One of the students said.

Terrador looked for the student who gave his opinion but was unable to single him or her out. "Whoever said that is right; however, will the benefits out way the losses?" Terrador said.

Spyro looked up at the guardian and said, "I would never send anyone out on the battle field to die. So why should I do that here?"

The dragon who suggested the idea stood up and walked over to them. "Well if you didn't do that then there is a possibility that everyone would die." The fire dragon said.

Terrador interrupted them both. "In different scenarios, you both would be correct." Terrador faced Spyro and continued, "Spyro, as a commander there will be times that you might have to send those under you to their death, but only in the most extreme conditions. It is alright to have to spend lives to save others." He then turned to the fire dragon. "Flint."

"Yes Terrador?" he answered.

"It is absolutely unacceptable to waste those lives." Terrador made sure that he fully understood what he meant.

Victor made note of Spyro's views of wasting and spending lives and made a mental note before speaking. "I hate to be the one to say this but a good example of spending a life would be Ignitus; if he hadn't sacrificed himself than Spyro and Cynder wouldn't have made it through the belt of fire." Victor didn't want to bring up the past guardian's death especially in front of his friend but he felt that it was necessary to use a real life example.

"Yes, Victor," Terrador said. "Just like Ignitus. He looked outside at a sun dial that he set up so he could be able to tell when he could release his class. "I'm sorry class; I should have been paying more attention to the time of day." As if those words were in an alarm clock, all of the students woke up and packed up their class work, put it into their satchels and left the classroom.

Spyro and Victor walked together towards the cafeteria in silence. Victor tried to start a conversation with Spyro so that he could get his mind off of Ignitus. "It's been about a week since those humans arrived here."

"Yeah, so what do you think about them." Spyro said.

"I can tolerate Ellie but I can't stand the other one."

"Why?"

"About a week ago, your friend Vandal started a fight between us. He came over to me and cut my leg with his tail blade." Vandal's voice was starting to get harsher as he spoke.

"Now just why would he do that?" Spyro questioned.

Victor started to glare as he talked. "Because we've hated each other since we were both young. Although neither of us can remember what started it, we still don't like each other. Anyway, we got into a fight and Zephyr decided to help me; he got him into a head lock and I started to beat the crap out of him. That's when that human in the armor, broke us up and took his side of what happened."

They rounded the hallway and entered the cafeteria and were about to get their food until they heard the screeching sound of the city's alarm. "The alarm!" Spyro said. "The city is under attack!" Everyone in the cafeteria flooded out of the cafeteria and into the courtyard. Spyro could hear the unmistakable sound of cannon fire; they quickly took flight and narrowly missed a cannon ball that would have shredded right through them. Spyro looked past the wall and could see thousands of apes closing in on the city, along with several siege towers, trebuchets, and mobile cannons.

"I haven't seen the apes attack the city in years, only grublins." Victor shouted.

Spyro saw a large cannon ball heading right toward them. He had little time to react so he dove onto Victor and the two of them plummeted towards the ground. They landed with a thud and got back onto their feet. "I haven't seen an army of apes this large, only packs of a few hundred. I'm going to go find Cynder and Isaac. The apes must be doing a last stand battle to take the city." Spyro popped his neck with a twist of his head, "Or die trying."

**Shout out to Native Avenger being able to complete Dead Realm today. If you have any questions or comments about this story please review or pm me. - USAF ParaJumper**


	10. We're in

**I was going to make a note about the layout of this chapter and how I got a little bit of extra time to write this because of a lockdown at my school because of a gun threat, but i'm sure that nobody wants to hear me talk so i'm just going to shut up now and let you read this chapter.**

Isaac was allowing Vandal to make as many of the javelin spears as he wanted; he would look back at the dragon every once in a while as he pondered on something that has been on his mind for the past few days, 'According to Nicole, I only have three weeks until whoever she was talking about comes.' Isaac has been counting down the days since his last vision. 'How could she even know if they are coming or not? She isn't real, it doesn't make any sense.' Two days ago, Isaac decided that he wasn't going to take any chances, he had been going around the area collecting spirit gems that he could use to make alternative ammo for his plasma cutter, pulse rifle, and Ellie's line gun. He also visited the black smith to order more blades for in ripper in exchange for more of his blank audio logs that the smith found very useful. Just the other day, he was able to find a shop that sold titanium rods that he could use to make Ellie's javelin spears. The shop owner said that Isaac could have them because he couldn't find a good use for them. Isaac spent all that day at the temple's black smiting class using their tools to try to get a certain part of the rod smoothly hollowed out so that he could copy how the ammunition was made. Unfortunately, Isaac did not have the parts that he needed to make the original spears that had the electrical charge as an external piece so he had to modify it so that it would be internal; he also had to use a green spirit gem to use as a power source for the electrical charge due to a lack of the original piece of technology.

Isaac didn't want to take any chances if Nicole's statement was true or not. The desk in the dorm room was filled with different ammo types and amounts ranging from several hundred pulse rounds to thirty line racks.

Vandal's pile of supplies to make the spears was steadily growing smaller as he was finishing with the last of the spears. "So what did you mainly work on while you were in space?" Vandal asked.

"I mainly worked on ships and not much else." Isaac answered. "Do you know if Nick has said anything about me yet?"

"She asked me not to say anything from our conversations." Vandal said, wanting to keep his promise.

"I understand." Isaac said. He suddenly had the strangest felling that something bad was about to happen.

Vandal had finished the last spear and set it with the others. He suddenly snapped to attention and was trying to make as little noise as possible. Isaac knew for a fact that something was wrong; he quietly moved to the window so that Vandal could keep his concentration. He moved the blind in front of the glass and looked at the sky; he could see something that looked like a rock that was starting to get larger, and it was coming straight for their building. Without saying anything, Isaac ran for Vandal and threw himself onto him and covered the dragon's head with his arms. They both could feel the entire building shake when the boulder made contact with the structure. "What was that?" Vandal shouted as Isaac got off of him and ran for the desk.

"We need to get to the ground floor!" he shouted while he put all of the ammo on the desk into his inventory. Isaac strapped his ripper, pulse rifle, and Ellie's javelin gun to himself and equipped his plasma cutter.

Vandal ran towards the exit once he felt the ground starting to shake, likely from another boulder hitting the lower floors like the last one. He ran out of the door and stopped for his friend who was searching for anything else that would be useful. "Hurry up Isaac!" he shouted to the engineer.

Isaac ripped open several drawers on the desk and took out anything that he could find, med packs, more plasma energy, even a stasis module. Once he was finished looting everything, he ran for the exit until a large piece of sheet rock dropped from the upper floor and blocked his path. 'Shit!' he thought. "Just go I'll meet up with you somewhere else!" he yelled at the ice dragon. Vandal left without another word. Isaac felt another boulder impact the building and could hear a large cracking sound at his feet. He wasn't given any time to react, in a split second he fell through the floor along with a few hundred pounds of materials and furniture. Isaac fell to the base of the floor beneath him where the first boulder hit. A large sheet from the floor had broken off and made a slope that led out of the hole and into the hallway. Isaac landed and rolled out of the building and activated his thrusters in the legs of his RIG to help break his fall. Once Isaac landed on his feet, he broke into a sprint and was nearly crushed by the falling rocks.

'Holy shit! That was close.' He thought. Isaac looked around at his surroundings; hundreds of civilians were running in panic to find cover from the incoming bombardment. In the short amount of time that the city was under attack, a number of buildings had already leveled along with a few bodies that were crushed because they were trapped in the collapsing structures. Isaac opened the functions menu in his RIG and made a video link with Ellie.

* * *

Ellie was at the medical center getting her eye socket checked on to make sure that it was healing properly. She was waiting in one of the treatment rooms that was surprisingly similar to the ones that were on the sprawl. It was a small white room with a roof that was a few feet above her head; there were various paintings of different artwork that the doctor had collected, hanging from the walls. Ellie had her line gun and plasma cutter attached to her side, she never went anywhere without any kind of weapon within arm's reach. 'What the bloody hell is taking them so long?' Ellie had been waiting for about twenty minutes for somebody to see her. 'I guess that the doctors here really are just like the ones back home, always keeping the patient waiting.' She joked to herself. Suddenly, the door swung open and a mole ran in with panic all over his face. "What is going on?" Ellie asked.

"The far side of the city is under attack! We were told to evacuate this area and to move underground." The mole said while going through the medical equipment that they might need for any injured. "I suggest that you do the same." The mole ran out of the room with his medical supplies in his arms.

Ellie walked out into the hallways and saw the staff running either to the nearest exit or helping injured patients. She walked out one of the side exits to the building and immediately saw some of the larger buildings under fire.

She looked at the RIG attachment on her wrist and noticed that she was receiving a video call from Isaac; she answered the call and Isaac appeared on the holographic screen. "Ellie!" Isaac shouted from inside of his helmet. "I'm at the temple, we need to meet up and do what we can to fend off the attacker while they get their defenses up."

"Ok, just send your location to me and I'll be there as fast as I can." Ellie said as she started to run in the general direction of the temple. "Also, can you get my javelin gun? I left it in our room."

"Yeah… our room is kind of fucked up right now but I was able to grab it and its spears." Ellie could see a building start to collapse on itself behind Isaac. He turned to face the building and started to run towards it. "I need to see if anyone survived that; I just finished uploading my location, I will see you in a little bit."

"Ok, I will see you soon." Ellie skidded to a stop and activated her locator on her wrist; it displayed a blue line that was slightly darker than Isaac's that curved around a building to her left and further down the street. She equipped her line gun and followed the path that was set for her. The streets were crowded from the amount of civilians that were either going to bear arms or those going to the underground tunnels.

Ellie continued down the road but stopped when she heard Cynder's voice, "Ellie, wait up!" The dragon called out. Ellie turned to face the young dragon that was almost chest high. "Have you seen Spyro? I have searched everywhere for him."

"No I haven't. Have you seen Isaac?" Ellie asked. Cynder shook her head. "Well if you help me get to him I can help you find Spyro."

Ellie activated her locator and pointed down the path that it led. "Isaac is that way but I'm not sure how far." Ellie said to Cynder. The dragon nodded in confirmation; they started to run down the blue path towards Isaac's location. The fire from the enemies' artillery was getting more and more intense as the ran; they were nearly crushed by different boulders. One that ricocheted off of a tower and another one that struck the ground a few feet to their left. Although they were lucky, others were not; bodies that were crushed littered the streets. Most of them were barely recognizable while others were just a red smear along the pavement. They reached the walls of the temple and were searching for one of the gates that would let them in. Cynder took flight to see where the closest one was so that she could let Ellie in. The walls to the temple were ten feet tall with no way to climb it.

Ellie's RIG lit up and Isaac appeared on the light blue screen. "Ellie where are you?" Isaac shouted as another boulder hit behind him.

"I'm just outside of the walls! I'm nowhere near any of the gates and Cynder just flew over the wall to look for a way in." Ellie shouted back so that Isaac could hear her over the destruction that was going on around her.

Isaac turned for a second to face some dragons that were being evacuated with several broken limbs and a section missing from her tail. "We have no time! You need to make your own entrance; after all your weapons are mining tools. I need you to help me evacuate these dragons, then we need to move to the gates and keep these fuckers from getting into the city,"

Isaac ended the transmission before Ellie could say anything else. She flailed her arms to get Cynder's attention and to try to get her within ear shot. The black dragon noticed her out of the corner of her eye and flew down to her; she stopped about thirty feet above Ellie and hovered in place. "The gates on this side are blocked off. You will have to go all the way around."

Ellie equipped her lone gun and turned on the sights; she aligned it to one of the more brittle spots of the wall and fired it four times. A three foot section of the wall started to crumple and collapse under its own weight. Ellie opened an audio link to Isaac's RIG. "I'm in, we are heading to your location now."

"Ok, I met up with Spyro. They just sent others to help us get everyone out of here." Isaac said over the audio link. "Just get here as fast as you can."

**Once agian if you have any questions or ideas about this story, please review or pm me and if you want to hear about the gun threat that was a diversion for two bank robberies then you can look that up on any news website.**


	11. Frontal assualt

**Yes, I know, sorry that I posted this so late today, I'm a terrible person. Enjoy.**

Ellie arrived at Isaac's location with Cynder and saw the terrible destruction of the area; there were several dozen casualties from mostly the fires and being crushed by falling rubble. Any survivors that were found were either escorted to a safe area by the city's guards or needed to be medically evacuated. Ellie rushed over to Isaac, who was crouched by an Earth dragon and was applying pressure to a large hole in the middle of her neck, likely because of a sharp board that impaled her. "What do you need me to do?" Ellie asked.

Isaac turned his head to face Ellie while he kept his hands on the injured dragon. "I need you to find someone that can help this dragon so that we can go to the gates!" Isaac shouted so the background noise wouldn't drown out his voice. He looked back at the dragon that was crying in pain and in fear of dying.

Ellie tried not to notice the blood that ran in-between Isaac's fingers and down the neck of the dragon; it gave her some unwanted memories from the Sprawl. She took off to find someone who could help them. Ellie looked around to find Cynder but realized that she ran off to meet with Spyro right when they arrived. Another tower to her left that was beyond the temple walls, fell when a boulder hit it's center. 'This place is falling apart.' Ellie thought.

* * *

Sweat was running down Isaac's back and arms underneath his RIG as he tried to keep as much blood in the dragon as possible. The green dragon stared at the engineer who was trying to help her with tears in her eyes. "Am I going to die?" she whimpered.

Isaac debated in his head what he should tell her; he wanted to comfort her but he knew that her chances were slim, depending on how deep the wound was, and the fact that she is talking is proof that the gash didn't reach her windpipe. "You're going to be alright, we're getting help for you right now." Isaac said in as calm of a voice as he could manage due to the surrounding environment. "My name is Isaac; what is your name?" Isaac said, trying to get her to take her mind off of her wound.

"My name is Nova." She said in a weak voice.

Isaac heard a soft screeching sound coming from in front of him. He looked up and immediately regretted it; Nicole was casually leaning up against a wall as though nothing was happening. She got off of the wall and started slowly walking past all the guards that were running rampant throughout the court yard while saying. "Don't lie to her Isaac. Go on, tell her how is going to bleed out in a little while and there is nothing that you can do to save her from dying, like with me. You had no control over any of our deaths and yet you still blame yourself. You try to conceal all of that guilt from everyone but soon it will all spill out just like the blood of the one that you're trying to save as we speak." Nicole walked up to Isaac's side and slid her hand along the top of his plasma cutter his plasma cutter. "You have the ability to end her suffering; wouldn't you like to have that same luxury in your final moments?" She knelt down next to Isaac and spoke into his ear, "Wouldn't you like to not have to suffer like all of those back on the sprawl?"

Isaac ignored her words and tried to focus on saving Nova's life. He knew what Nicole said was true, he could end it for her right now but he also knew that she still had a chance to live. He turned his head to the left but Nicole wasn't there anymore. He turned back to the dragon and said, "I will make sure that you live to see another day but you must try to stay with me."

* * *

It didn't take very long for Ellie to be able to find someone to help her. She ran up to three guards that just got done helping move a patient, and had them follow her to Isaac's location. The guards set a large wooden strip that was similar to a stretcher, next to the wounded Earth dragon and prepared to transfer her to the board. Ellie watched Isaac put the dragon into stasis to slow down the bleeding while he let one of the guards take over his position and move her onto the wooden board.

Ellie watched each of the guards take a corner of the board and carry the dragon off. Isaac turned to Ellie and unhooked the javelin gun that was attached to his advanced RIG, and handed it to her. Ellie took the weapon and swung it over her shoulder with a sling that was attached to it. Once Ellie's hands were free, Isaac handed her all of the ammo that went to her line gun and javelin spear and even gave her about forty plasma energy for her plasma cutter. Ellie loaded all of her weapons and said to Isaac, "Let's get going."

Isaac equipped his pulse rifle and loaded it. "We can go out through the north side of the temple wall and head to the main gates from there; from what I was told they haven't breached it yet but for all we know, that may change by the time we get there." Isaac said. Ellie nodded in confirmation as she equipped her plasma cutter. They ran towards the temple wall where one of the undamaged gates were at and ran through it. They both hoped that they were going to be able to make it in time to support the troops there but they knew that they had to be prepared for anything.

* * *

While Isaac and Ellie were busy trying to get Nova evacuated, Spyro and Cynder met each other and flew to the main gates to fend off the attackers. Several of the city guards were at the entrance of the large golden gate, trying to keep it closed. Spyro and Cynder landed in front of the gate and saw how much the moles were trying to keep it closed. Despite all of their efforts, the gates slowly pried open and allowed them to have a clear view of some of the apes. Spyro and Cynder ran to the entrance and used their elemental breaths to keep them from entering the gate. The gates slowly opened wider for each passing second no matter how many of the apes that the dragons would kill. Spyro and Cynder were starting to get concerned because they knew they would have to get some green spirit gems soon to recharge their elemental breaths.

After about another minute, one of the small apes were able to squeeze through the gate and kill one of the moles by slashing his throat with his claws. Cynder charged the ape and impaled it with her horns in the chest; she knew that the attack collapsed its lungs. Another three apes were able to jump through the opening, but were easily killed by Cynder using a combination of her tail blade and ramming them into the gate.

Spyro ran to the entrance once he was out of elemental energy to help Cynder. One of the larger apes was trying to fit through the door; Spyro was about to attack it until a large wall of ice froze the entire opening to the gate. "I can see that you two are doing just fine." Vandal said as he walked up behind Spyro and Cynder.

Spyro face Vandal and said, "Thanks for the support, but that ice won't last very long; we need to seal the gate and make sure that they don't open it again." Spyro thought for a moment about what their next move should be. "Vandal, were the apes able to get over the walls anywhere else?" Spyro asked.

"That's part of the reason why I'm here." Vandal answered. "Do you know where Isaac is? I need his assistance with helping us with our cannons."

"Yes, I saw him a little while ago; he was at the temple but he is going to be here in a little while." The dragons snapped their heads to face the gate when they heard a loud crack go up the front of the wall of ice. The frozen wall didn't last as long as Vandal expected it to hold up; it slowly chipped away piece by piece and fell to the ground. The apes on the other side of the gates were trying as best they could to break the sheet of ice; a few seconds later, they finally broke through. Several of the small apes charged through the hole in the ice before Vandal was able to put up another layer of ice. They charged the dragons to by time for the next few apes to squeeze through. The dragons engaged the apes and killed them quickly and with ease.

The guards left the fighting to the dragons and tried to slow the flow of enemies by trying to keep the gate as closed as they could manage. Another five smaller apes pushed through the gate followed by two larger apes. The dragons engaged them before they were able to kill the guards that hindered their progress. Vandal charged at one of the larger apes and was about to kill it until its left arm was shot of by some kind of blue projectiles, He skidded to a halt just before the same ape's head was shot off as well. Isaac and Ellie ran past him and killed any apes that passed through the gate. "You stole my kill!" Vandal shouted jokingly to Isaac.

Isaac put the apes that tried to breach the gate into stasis and shot off their limbs while Ellie helped try to keep the gate closed. "Bitch about it to someone who cares, I need you, Spyro, and Cynder to close that gate while I hold them off!" Isaac shouted back. He fired another fifteen pulse rounds into the crowd, killing two more apes. The gate slowly closed with the extra support from Ellie and the dragons pushing the gate while Isaac gave them suppression fire. 'Who the hell left this damn gate unlocked?" Isaac thought as the gate slammed shut and was locked.

A few of the guards collapsed from having to push that gate for so long. "What if the lock doesn't hold?" One of the moles called out.

Vandal walked up to the large gate and fired a blast of ice at the lock and up along where the two large doors would meet. "That will hopefully hold better than the last one." Vandal said. He turned to face Isaac and said. "Isaac, we need your help at the western wall; some of the cannons malfunctioned and we need your assistance."

"Lead the way." Isaac said.

**I belive that it is time to ask something that I've been thinking about for a while; what would you reader like for Isaac and Ellie to have as a fourth weapon once they arrive onto, (wait for it...) the USG Caliber (which I'm introducing in the next chapter) Please leave your answer or any questions that you may have in the reviews or pm me.**


	12. USG Caliber

**In this chapter it really just introduces the USG Caliber and Captain Thompson. Isaac and the dragons are not in this one, sorry.**

In the farther reaches of the Milky Way galaxy, there was a lone planet cracker-class ship adrift far away from any kind of colony, the USG Caliber. The ship was command by Navy Captain John A. Thompson; he stands above most of his crew at 6"2 without wearing his uniform dress shoes that made him an extra one and a half inches taller. The left side of his chest had a rainbow of campaign ribbons ranging from a good conduct ribbon to a purple heart awarded to him after he was shot while doing some security work on his last deployment. Captain Thompson has the cliché military buzz-cut hair style; if he were to let it grow out for a week than anyone who was within arm's length of him could see a thin layer of his black hair. The Captain was in his quarters, putting on his uniform while he was recording in his audio journal. "Captain's log: it is currently May third, oh nine hundred hours Earth eastern time. Five days ago I received word from my superiors that while I'm recovering from my gunshot wound from three weeks ago, I would be commanding the USG Caliber on a mining operation in place of the ship's regular commander." Captain Thompson said to the audio log on his desk while he tied his tie. "What troubles me is why Earth Gov. requested that a Navy officer would lead a private mining operation if the ship is already outfitted with the proper crew and equipment. Something isn't right; they even ordered that two hundred Earth Gov. soldiers are to be accompanying us on our operation. I assume that it is to prevent another terrorist attack like the one on the USG Ishimura. The new laws for Earth Gov. security on large ships are starting to get ridiculous. But I still don't understand why they need the Navy's involvement."

The Captain finished putting on his uniform and walked out of the automatic sliding doors to his room. The hallway of the officer's wing had almost blinding white walls and a floor that was so clean you could literally see a perfect reflection of yourself. He was needed at the bridge so that they could start the journey that would take to reach their destination.

The Captain rode an express elevator to the flight deck where he could catch a tram to the bridge. Scattered throughout the open deck were cases that were filled with mining equipment from explosion sheets to plasma cutters. There were a few dozen crew that were taking inventory while others quickly secured the gear inside the proper casing. The Captain took a few steps out of the elevator and everyone that was a part of Earth Gov. stopped whatever they were doing and snapped to attention for the officer. Thompson was used to this kind of treatment and was glad that Earth Gov. was at least disciplined. He took a few more steps and said, "At ease; continue your tasks."

Thompson walked down a few vacant hallways and reached a tram station that was scheduled to go to the bridge. There were two others who were already waiting for the tram to arrive when he got there; they were both Earth Gov. soldiers who had a pay grade of E-6, which would take most people around fifteen standard Earth years, both of them had a pulse rifle in hand. They both went to attention when they was the uniformed officer approach them. "At ease." Thompson commanded. "How are you both doing today?"

"Good sir." They said in unison.

"We were told that we were to escort you to the bridge." One of them reported.

Thompson didn't like to be told that he needed an escort anywhere; he knew that was no trouble here but on previous combat tours, he was given an escort while going from base to base because they knew that they were going to be getting into a firefight along the way. "Thank you." He told the soldiers. The tram arrived after a few minutes of waiting and came to a smooth stop. The three of them boarded the tram and took a seat in one of the rows along the side.

They heard the intercom turn on and an A.I. voice said, "Estimated time to arrival: Twenty minutes." The Captain took this time to get some much needed rest. Just five days ago he was getting out of the hospital from his chest wound and was greeted by his superior who handed him a letter stating his new deployment while he recovered. During those five days he has only gotten around eight hours of sleep and little time to relax so he wanted to get as much sleep as he could. As he started to fall asleep, he could hear the soft rumbling of the tram as it moved throughout the USG Caliber. Within a minute he fell asleep in his seat while his escorts were discussing what they had been doing on their last deployment.

A few minutes later, Thompson was awaken by one of his guards when he lightly shook his shoulder. "Sir, we've arrived." The Captain slowly got to his feet and let out a yawn. He wished that he was able to have a little bit more time to catch up on sleep but he knew that he had a job to do. They exited the tram and walked out of the landing area.

The Captain checked his watch to see how much time he had to be there. 'I have about thirty minutes left; might as well get something to drink.' He wanted to make sure that he was wide awake when he arrived at the bridge. "Do you boys want a coffee?" He asked his escort.

"If we have time." One of them said.

"Good." Thompson said. "We'll stop by a stand ." The T=tram stations one the newer planet crackers like the Caliber, were just like any other air or spaceport; crowded, the security wanted to make you kill someone, and it had quite a few restaurants. The three of them went to the nearest coffee stand and each of the got a coffee with two espresso shots.

The Captain looked at his watch again; he wanted to make sure that he arrived at least fifteen minutes ahead of schedule.

They continued to walk to their destination as they drank their bitter coffee. They exited the tram station and walked down a path that the guards led. They arrived at an elevator that led directly to the bridge; Captain Thompson's RIG was scanned by a computer that opened the doors once he was verified. "Welcome Captain Thompson." The A.I said.

He walked into the elevator and said to the guards, "Thank you gentlemen." He pressed a button that closed the elevator door and then another one that sent him to the bridge. He waited for about a minute and then the elevator opened and revealed the medium sized bridge/control room. Everyone was in a rush to get their assigned task done before the checklist was due. Thompson took a few steps out of the elevator and the doors to it closed. The room was called to attention by one of the Earth Gov. MPs and anyone else from Earth Gov. did the same. "At ease. How is everyone doing today?"

"Outstanding sir!" The Earth Gov. MPs and officers said.

Thompson sometimes hated how they were always forced to say that as answer if a superior asked them how they were doing. "How is everyone really doing? Tired?" He addressed the crew. He received mixed answers from a yes to someone who was actually excited to be onboard the ship. He walked to an elevated area where he had a view of everything happening in the room; he also had four different screens where he could monitor anything he wanted at any given time. "Well let's get started on the checklist." One of the officers uploaded the checklist to one of Thompson's monitors and The Captain started going off of the list. "Are all crew members accounted for?" He asked.

Another officer pulled up a system that scanned for all of the RIGs on the ship. "Sir, all crew are present and accounted for; we have a count of two thousand three hundred and twelve out of two thousand three hundred and twelve."

Thompson made a check by the objective. "Are there any known damages to the ship or any repairs be conducted tight now?"He went over the check list for half an hour. He asked about set coordinates, obstructers along their path, sickness onboard, food and water supply, etc. Once the checklist was completed, Thompson opened a systems check onto one of his monitors. Thompson hit a button on the touch screen monitor in front of him that turned on the ship wide intercom. "All hands, secure the deck. We are going slip space in five minutes." He turned to the navigations officer and said. "I want you to start our course to Sedna IX."

"Aye aye sir!" The officer responded.

The USG Caliber slowly turned once the navigations officer powered up the engines. "prepare the engines for slip space and fire them on my mark." The captain turned on the intercom again and said, "All hands, prepare to enter slip space." He looked at his navigation officer who gave Thompson a thumbs up. "Entering slip space on my mark in ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one, mark."

The navigation officer hit the throttle and the USG Caliber accelerated so much that nearly everyone onboard fell to their feet then everything slowed down as the ship stabilized. "Sir, the ship is stable; expected time to arrival is two weeks, six days, and three hours."

Thompson got back to his feet along with everyone else on the deck. "Good. Carry on." With that Thompson left the bridge and went into the elevator. He pressed the button that would send him to where he parted from his escort. The doors to the elevator opened to allow him to leave the area. 'Finally, I'll have a chance to rest once I get back to my quarters.'

**In the last chapter I asked what fourth weapon everyone wanted for Isaac and Ellie to have but I didnt recive much feedback so I'm not sure what everybody wants. And to Zeus, do you mean a seeker rifle, because Isaac already has a pulse rifle. If you have any questions or ideas for this story than please review or pm me.**


	13. The will to win it

**Well, this chapter is a little late. Sorry about that.**

The battle lasted for at least sixteen hours, everyone fought with little food, water, and rest even though the body count was rising on both sides. Isaac spent most of the time either repairing and loading cannons, or he was outside of the walls with the city's guards trying to hold the front line of defense. Isaac would dig a hole towards the front, where he would be most useful and stay in there to use it as cover while he mowed down any apes that were in range. The only breaks that Isaac ever got was when he needed to go back into Warfang to make more ammunition for his pulse rifle. Isaac made around six trips back to the city to make more pulse round from spirit gems that he would break along the way. All of the equipment that Isaac would carry on him was starting to take its toll on his body; he knew that his ripper and plasma cutter were doing more harm than good, so when he on one of his trips back inside the walls, he stashed them both along with their blades and plasma energy in a safe hiding spot and marked their locations in his RIG. Whenever he wasn't needed to help with the cannons he was doing whatever he could to help the defense; he even helped to take out one of the apes trebuchets by using his kinesis module to move a concrete wall to provide cover to a group of moles that were advancing to take it out.

On several occasions, Ellie would run out of ammo to her weapons and had to locate Isaac to have him make more plasma energy for her or gave her some from his stash. Ellie's main job was to help protect the gates and assets to Warfang like its armory or artillery. The primary weapon that she used was her plasma cutter because of the ease of making ammo and its light weight; however, her line gun was more powerful but it was extremely bulky for her and its line racks took longer to make. Her javelin gun was the least useful to her at this time; the ammo was in small quantities and difficult to make and she couldn't carry much of it at once. She eventually couldn't stand how useless her javelin gun was at this time; so she hid it along with Isaac's weapons as well with her line gun.

Towards the beginning of the battle. Spyro and Cynder were on the offensive; they dealt with large numbers of the apes with ease due to their years of practice and long hours of training. Their mission was to destroy the apes artillery with the least amount of casualties as possible. Spyro was thinking back to Terrador's lesson that he taught him on lives being spent or wasted; he knew that he needed all of the help that he could get but he knew that not everybody was going to be coming back alive. He debated with himself about whether or not he should wait for the city to thin the ape's ranks but that would take up time that they didn't have. He sent Cynder awhile ago to find volunteers for this mission and was taking much longer than he expected her to. While she was out on her assignment, Spyro was figuring out the details of how they were going to conduct the mission; he was standing on solid stone wall that served as the first line of defense to Warfang. He went over several different ways that they could approach, 'We could go high and try to hit them from above and out of their range but they will be harder to hit and we would have to make several trips to get more green spirit gems.' He debated in his head. After about thirty more minutes of debating with himself, he came up with a plan; he and a few others are going to attack the infantry and draw their fire while the others were going to dive from above and destroy the artillery and go back into the sky for the next pass.

Just as he was finishing the details of the plan, Cynder arrived with about twenty dragons, some of them were already wounded and all of them were exhausted. Spyro walked up to Cynder and asked, "Is this everybody?"

She sighed and said, "This is everybody that was able to be pulled away from their assignments." Spyro walked past her and looked over the dragons.

Five of them were adult dragons while the rest of them were around his age or a little older. They were mostly fire and earth dragons with one exception, Victor. Spyro was glad to see his friend want to fight alongside him on the battlefield, but he didn't like the shape that he was in. Victor's need for rest was obvious after fighting for almost a full day with hardly anything to eat since that morning. Spyro wasn't sure that he wanted for him to fight this battle in his current condition. "I think that you should sit this one out Victor." He told him.

"I can fight. I'm fine." He pleaded. Victor wanted to be one this mission so that the battle would end as soon as possible. "I promise that I will not be a hindrance."

Spyro sighed and took a few steps back so that everyone could see them. "Before I reveal the plan, I need to let everyone know what you are getting into first. I cannot promise anyone's safe return, we are getting up close and personal with their artillery and spears. Some of us may not be coming back, this may be the last time that you see each other; so if anyone wants to leave now you may." Spyro waited for a minute to see if anyone took his offering; nobody moved an inch. "Alright, this is what we're going to do." Spyro turned around to face the enemy forces in the distance. "I need the ten fastest flyers here to go with me to act as a distraction while the rest of you will go with Cynder and use the high clouds as cover while you close in on them and dive bomb them. Once it is destroyed, you will climb back into the sky and get ready for the next one. We will target the closest one and take it out; then we will move in to the next closest and do the same until they are all destroyed. Any questions?"

An adult fire dragon who was in the back of the group stepped forward. "I have a question." He stated. "What happens if we run out of energy for our elemental breath?"

"Then we will come back and get some spirit gems." Spyro answered. "Any more questions?" Spyro waited for anybody to speak up; when nobody answered he said, "Alright then, who thinks that they're a fast flyer?" It took a while but eight dragons stepped forward including Victor. "I need two more." Nobody volunteered. "If no one steps up then I will choose based on what I know about your skills." Spyro knew very little about any of them; he was mainly bluffing and trying to use it as a scare tactic, hoping that he could get one or two of them to go with them.

A few seconds later, another young female fire dragon declared, "I'll go with you." Spyro was relieved that she spoke up. He didn't want to make a mistake by choosing someone that was less likely to succeed than someone else; it would have been a fatal mistake for sure.

There was still one more slot left to be filled; Spyro knew that they were wasting too much time here and that they needed to move very soon. If nobody spoke up in the next few seconds then he would have to choose and let the rest go with Cynder. "Anyone else?" Spyro asked the group. "Fine then, I'll just pick one of you." Spyro examined his group again, he wanted to make sure that his group was strong but Cynder's group still needed strong and capable dragons that be the most help to her group. He wanted to pick someone who looked average compared to everyone else, he wanted the "middle-man". He tried to make his decision as quickly as possible, the longer they took than the more damage their artillery would do to the city. After a quick decision he ended up choosing an earth dragon that seemed only a few years older than him. He walked up to him and asked, "Are you ok with going with us?" If he had any doubts about going than Spyro knew that he should send him somewhere else.

"Sure." He said.

"Alright then, let's move out." Spyro said.

**Again I'm sorry that this chapter is late and a bit short. If you have any questions, comments, or ideas for this story then please leave a review or pm me.**


	14. Revealed

**I think that this was one of my better chapters with Isaac and Nicole interacting and just showing how tormented Isaac is by her. Enjoy**

It was two hours into the night and Warfang was still engaged with the apes. Both sides have suffered but the apes were having the worst of it due to Spyro's efforts, they were able to destroy the high-valued threats of the city, but at a high cost. Out of the twenty-two dragons that went on their mission, only eight of them made it back. Spyro watched as his team fought and died to protect Warfang and would never know if their deaths would make a difference in the battle. The outcome of their flight weighed heavily on Spyro's shoulder, they may have completed the objectives but it was at too high of a cost. He was furious at himself for not being able to protect those whose lives were his responsibility. He remembered the lesson that morning from Terrador about lives being spent and wasted, but e wasn't sure which one it was today.

* * *

Isaac was on the first sleep cycle that he, Ellie, and about forty guards set up. Every two hours they would rotate twenty of them and head to a safe area to get some rest before going back on to the battlefield. Isaac didn't take this time to sleep, he spent it on doing weapon maintenance and making ammo. The ammunition cache that he set up for him and Ellie, was completely empty; Including Ellie's Javelin gun. He tried to manage his time as best he could by making more of the plasma energy and pulse rounds because of the ease and rate of production of them. He was making all of his ammo in one of the underground shelters where it seemed like nobody was able to sleep. 'This place reminds me of the mining caves back on the Sprawl.' Isaac thought after he brushed his hand along the damp walls. Upon further inspection, he could tell that the walls had been cleanly chipped, suggesting that the place was just recently built.

He went to a secluded place that he would be able to concentrate at to get away from the civilians and to perform the maintenance correctly. The lack of rest was quickly catching up to him and that he hasn't been able to sit down wasn't helping. He set his plasma cutter and pulse rifle on a large, flat rock that came only a few inches off of the ground and took a seat next to it.

Ellie came along side him, set her weapons on the same rock that he did, and took a seat next to him as well. "So, how have you been holding up?" she asked.

Isaac deactivated his helmet and allowed it to break apart and attach itself to its adjacent part of his RIG before speaking, "I've been alright, but the same can't be said about everyone." He took out a few spirit gems that he crushed along the way there and staged them for the process of turning them into ammo. "How have you been?" He asked her.

Ellie turned her back to Isaac and pointed at her RIG that was glowing yellow. "Not very well." She said. "I've had to use both of my medical packs, do you have any more?"

Isaac grabbed his last med pack that was strapped to his belt; he already used his large med pack when he was impaled in the stomach by a spear that was thrown by an ape who was either a good shot or got a lucky hit. He gave the med pack to Ellie and said, "With the way that the battle is going now, we should win within a few hours." He said hopefully.

They both sat in silence for a while before Ellie decided to start a conversation that would help cheer them both up. "Do you think that there are any friendly ships in this part of space besides Earth Gov.?"

"I honestly don't think so." Isaac didn't want to be the one who made it sound like there was no chance of returning home was lost but he didn't want to give her false hope. "But that doesn't mean they're not coming." Isaac stood up from his resting place, "I'm going to take a short walk." He left Ellie alone with his equipment and walked further into the cave complex. Isaac thought about the warning that Nicole gave him; in two weeks and six days "they" were supposed to arrive and cause destruction to Warfang and yet the surface looked exactly like it did in his vision, even the placement of some of the bodies. She also told him that the city had one month left to prosper but with the situation, it seemed like a lie. 'She probably said that to have me bring my guard down.' Isaac continued to ponder on this while he walked past several of the underground shelters. He turned on his RIG's computer to check how much time he had until the next rotation. The timer that he set before he went down there read one hour and fifteen minutes . 'I still have time.' He thought. The only sounds that he could hear in the caves were the sounds of frightened civilians and the screams of the wounded that were being rushed to get medical treatment. If he were to close his eyes then this place would sound exactly the way it did on the sprawl during the first few hours of the infection.

Isaac tried to ignore the screams of pain as much as he could but it reminded him so much of his past experiences that he couldn't resist the ear pricing screams from getting to him. He sat down next to one of the buildings and cupped his ears and closed his eyes and tried to block out the sound. He could still hear the screams along with another voice that was calling his name. "Isaac." It said in a low voice. "Isaac." It said again but slightly louder. "Isaac!" It yelled. He opened his eyes and saw Cyril standing before him. "Isaac, what is wrong?" The dragon asked.

Isaac uncupped his ears and rested them on his knees. "I feel like I've never left the Sprawl. I keep getting these visions that show me nothing but death all around me." He said to Cyril. "And just where the fuck have you been this whole time?" He said in an angry tone.

A glare started to show on Cyril's face. "The other guardians and myself have fought this whole time as well, just as you have."

"Sorry, I've just been under a lot of stress." Isaac apologized. "I just haven't seen you while I was out there."

Cyril's glare went away after Isaac apologized. "What were you just doing? You were covering your ears and it seemed like you were hurt."

"It's nothing. So, how is Nick doing?" Isaac asked.

"She is doing fine; she is still not talking about you or what happened that day." He said. "Right now she is doing some medical work at the medical center."

Isaac stood up and popped his neck on both sides. "I've tried to tell her about my dead girlfriend but she completely ignores me or walks away, but I think that I'll be able to talk to her soon." He said. "I need to go check on something before I head back out."

Cyril replied, "Ok, I wish you luck on the surface."

Isaac walked away from him and thought, 'I still don't like him.' He wanted to go find out where they were keeping Nova, the dragon that he helped in the court-yard, and make sure that she was alright. He had to ask for direction several times to the main medical area. There was only one medical facility under there and it was assigned to a large building that looked like it could hold up to around three thousand people. He went into the building and looked around to see if one of the guards that evacuated Nova was there.

He didn't have to look very long before he was stopped by a doctor. "Can I help you with something?" a mole doctor asked.

"You can actually." Isaac said. "I'm looking a female earth dragon that goes by Nova; she was impaled by a sharp in her neck." Isaac pointed to his lower neck area to give the doctor a reference point. "Do you know where she is?"

The doctor pondered for a moment. "Yes I know Nova I operated on her earlier; unfortunately It wasn't just an impaled neck." Isaac's eyes started to shift down towards the ground as the mole spoke. "She also had internal bleeding coming from her liver from some kind of impact, more than likely from debris hitting her. I'm sorry to tell you this."

* * *

Nick was watching Isaac from a across the room. 'Why would he be here?' she wondered. She watched Isaac talk to one of the doctors but she couldn't tell what they were talking about. Isaac turned to the building and Nick decided to follow him to see what he was up to.

* * *

What the doctor told Isaac hit him like a ton of bricks. He told Nova that she would survive the neck injury but he had no idea about the internal bleeding. He walked outside and down the pathway. 'If I had known about her liver I would have done what Nicole suggested.' There was nobody close by except for Nick, who was following him and making sure that he couldn't see her.

Isaac continued to torment himself for a while more until his head started to as if something was crushing his brain. He clenched his head and moved in between two buildings. "Isaac." Nicole whispered to him.

'Fuck no.' Isaac thought. "Why are you here again." He shouted.

Nicole walked around Isaac and traced her finger along his back. "I find it funny how you try and try to get rid of me but you know that I will always come back." She walked around in front of him and leaned against the building. "I told you that she was going to die, but you refused to believe me and now you sit here and yet once again blame yourself for something that you couldn't control."

"Shut up." Isaac said.

"What?" Nicole asked.

"Just shut the fuck up and get the fuck out of my life!" Isaac screamed. "You are dead and yet you're still here! I killed you on the Sprawl and you came back a second time! Get the fuck away from me!" Nicole just smiled at him and vanished without another word.

Isaac could hear his heat beat inside of his head. He tried to control his breathing after shouting at the top of his lungs; if it weren't for all the noise down there then everybody could have heard him. Isaac decided that he had enough and turned to leave, but stopped when he saw Nick standing right next to him at about chest level. "What were you screaming at?" she asked.

**I must say that I had more fun writing this chapter than i have with some of the others. If you have any questions, comments, or ideas about this story than please review or send me a pm.**


	15. Nicole

**I would just like to thank everybody for the support that you have shown me for the few months that I've been writing, we are currently nearing the half-way point and its been going great so far.**

Isaac didn't know what to make of the situation; he looked around to make sure that nobody was around him when he went into the alleyway. How much of that were you able to hear?" he asked Nick.

"From when you told the wall to 'shut the fuck up'." She said. 'just like you told me.' She thought to herself.

There was a moment of awkward silence and an exchanging of glances between the two of them before Isaac said, "I should get going, I need to be somewhere in a little while."

He started to walk off and went around Nick to get onto the main walkway of the cavern. "Wait!" Nick called out to him. Isaac turned to the fear dragon as she chased after him down the pathway. "I have to make my way back to the surface this way, so we might as well walk together." Nick really wanted to talk to Isaac about what happened back there out of curiosity, but still had a grudge towards him.

Isaac was glad that it seemed as though Nick was starting to forgive him after what happened between them in the courtyard a week ago. Even though there were still the sounds of the civilians yelling and screaming from the chaos that was happening a few hundred feet above their heads, it seemed quite to him while he walked with Nick. He checked the timer on his RIG and it showed that he had around forty-five minutes until the next rotation; seeing that he was running out of time, he decided to say to Nick, " Do you know what dementia is?"she looked at him in confusion and then turned her head back to the pathway. "Dementia as a mental sickness that causes the brain to see and hear things that aren't really there." Isaac said; he felt it was necessary to start talking about his condition before he told her about Nicole.

The dragon wasn't sure exactly where he was going with this; at first she thought that he was just talking to hear himself but she decided to listen anyways. "So? What does that have to do with anything?" Although she was curious, she wanted to say as little to him as possible.

Isaac let out a sigh. He knew by her smart ass attitude that she still wasn't happy with him so he decided to skip the science lesson and get straight to the point. "The dementia is killing me." He told her. Nick's walking pace started to slow down until they were barely moving. "I wasn't yelling at you in the courtyard a week ago; I was yelling at someone in the vision that I was having, a vision from someone that I lost three years ago."

This all sounded like something out of a novel that Nick would read for a language class. The more that Isaac would talk, the more unbelievable it sounded to her. "If you want to lie to me I can just keep walking on my own." She said as she started to put more distance between him and her, but every time she stepped left, Isaac would close the space just as quickly. "Stop." She yelled at him.

"Not until you listen." Isaac persisted. "I was yelling at her, not at you." He knew that he needed something that could help him make her see that he was telling the truth. 'What could I use?' he thought. Then he could feel something nagging at the back of his head. 'The video.' He remembered.

Nick started to get annoyed by him. "You told me to shut the fuck up, you called me by my name." The tone in her voice was starting to rise.

"It may sound stupid, but that was her name and I can prove it." They both stopped and Isaac opened up his RIG's computer and opened a file that was named 'Nicole'. Isaac turned his head from left to right, looking for a place to sit down. "Come with me." He said. He walked over to a flat rock and sat down while Nick decided to stand in front of him. "Sit down, the screen will be more clear if you look at it from here."

Nick groaned and walked to his side and sat next to him. "So, how do you plan on proving it to me?" She said.

Isaac was starting to get a bit more than annoyed by her attitude. He opened a pictures folder within the file and scrolled through the photos of him and Nicole. "That's her." He said while pointing to a photo of them in front of the USG Ishimura before she left to be the senior medical officer on board. He pressed a button on the screen that would scroll through the pictures every few seconds like a slide show. For every picture that was shown, it brought back memories to Isaac; and unlike the past few days, these were the happy memories that he shared with her in the two years that he was with her. The next picture showed Isaac doing shot of whiskey with someone else at a small table with empty shot glasses In between them while Nicole and several others cheering them on. "This one was taken while we were at a bar and a friend wanted to have a drinking competition with me. I ended up passing out afterwards and Nicole had to drag my ass out of there and into her car to take me home."

Isaac forget completely about Nick sitting next to him and just kept on scrolling throughout the photos. The folder on his RIG must have had at least five hundred pictures of them together varying from different parties to pictures of different dates they went on. Although Nick didn't mind looking, she needed to be on the surface in a little bit. "Isaac I don't mean to be rude but I have to get to the surface soon."

She got up to leave but Isaac put his hand on her shoulder and said, "Please sit back down; I have one more thing to show you." He pushed a button to exit his pictures folder and opened another that held videos. "This was a video that she sent to me while she was on that ship from the first picture." Nick sat back down with him and waited for him to play the video. "It was also the last video that she sent me."

The screen dimed when Isaac pressed the play button on the projected screen. It started with Nicole sitting in a chair and adjusting the camera. She was alone in a small room that was filled with medical supplies and various other boxes. "Isaac, it's me." Nicole said as she finished centering the camera. "I wish I could talk to you. I'm sorry, I'm sorry about everything." Isaac could feel a tear in his eye starting to form. He didn't want to cry in front of Nick so he activated his helmet which took form around in head in seconds. Nick was flinched when she heard the sounds of the metal hitting and locking into each other. "I wish I could just…talk to someone. It's all falling apart down here." The video flicked as Nick was trying to process in her head what she was watching. "I can't believe what's happening…It's strange, it's a little thing. In the end, it all comes down to just one little thing."

Nick eyes grew wide when the camera zoomed out and showed that Nicole held up a needle. "What is that?" She asked. Nick had never seen a needle in her life because any medicine that they would use would be either red crystals or they would drink any needed medication; to her it looked like a small dagger. Isaac gestured toward towards the video to have her watch it to the end.

The video was growing too painful for Isaac to watch; he just closed his eyes and waited for the video to be over. Nicole held the needle close to her arm but made sure that it didn't touch her arm. "I didn't want it to end like this, I really wanted to see you again, just once. I loved you. I always loved you." Isaac held his breath as he knew what was about to happen even though he didn't watch it. Nicole squeezed her left hand so the needle would go cleanly into her vain; she took in a deep breath and stuck the needle into her arm. Nick had the same expression that she had earlier, at first she wasn't sure exactly what she was doing at first but when she held up the needle it became very clear to her.

Nicole flinched from the pain that shot through her arm and with a push of her thumb, she injected the lethal substance. She let out her breath and started to lose consciousness; her grip on the needle started to loosen and her muscles started to relax. Once her hand started to slip away from the needle, she closed her eyes and started to slip out of her chair; she died in a matter of seconds.

Isaac shut down the projector and just stared blankly at the ground and let the tears flow from his face but didn't make a sound. "I'm sorry for your loss Isaac." Nick said. She leaned herself against him and wrapped her wing around his shoulder. "So your dementia is causing you to see her?"

"Yes." Isaac said. "In fact, I can see her right in front of me." Nick looked in front of them but didn't see anything but to Isaac, she was about ten feet away from the two of them with blood dripping down her, with a smile across her face.

**I do have a bit of news, as of right now I'm currently speaking to a United States Air Force recruiter and currently signing the paperwork to join; I wont be shipping out until the fall of 2014 more than likely, so because of this I'm going to be spending a lot more time with the recruiter and conditioning my body for my job as a combat controller (If I survive the ten months of training) which is just a step below being a pararescueman. So I MIGHT not be able to update weekly but I will still try my hardest to do so.- USAF Parajumper**


	16. Let's finish this

**See, I told you all that I would still try to update weekly. I don't really have anything else to say so enjoy.**

Isaac chose to ignore Nicole's demonic look and just focus his attention to Nick. "Thank you." He said. With a quick glance, Isaac looked to see if Nicole was still there but she vanished before he got the chance.

Nick brought her wing back to its normal resting position on her back. "I'm sorry for the way that I've been treating you. I was just being so stubborn and just thinking about myself that I completely shunned you." She apologized.

"You have nothing to be sorry for. I've been trying to run away from Nicole's death for so long and since you remind me so much of her, I was trying to run away from you as well ever since we met in the swamp and you told me your name. So for that, I'm sorry." Isaac said in a soft voice.

Nick took in his words and just sat there, pondering on what he just said. 'That's why he was acting so strange around me.' She was trying to figure this out before confronting him in the hallway a week ago. She tried to remember what happened that day that Isaac yelled at her.

* * *

Nick asked several people who spent a lot of time with him, including Ellie about why Isaac tried avoiding her. "Just go up to him and talk to him." Ellie suggested to her in the hallway on the way to get some breakfast.

"But if he's been trying to avoid me then how will I get to him?" Nick questioned.

Ellie shrugged and said, "You will just have to catch him off-guard."

They arrived at the café and Ellie opened the door to let Nick in before her. "Thank you." She said. Ellie gave her a nod and walked in after her. Nick went to an empty table and reserved it for the two of them and waited for Ellie to come back. She sat there patiently and just continued to ponder of what Ellie told her. A little while later, Ellie came back with their food along with Spyro and Cynder. "How are you both doing?" She asked them.

"Alright, just getting a bite to eat before our training." Spyro said. They sat down and started eating without much talking. After awhile, Nick spotted Isaac, along Vandal- a dragon that she didn't know very well- walking towards their table.

The two of them sat down and Isaac handed Vandal his tray and noticed that Ellie had a new eye patch that was sealed around the socket. "So, you saw a doctor."

"I did. They cleaned the wound and sealed this patch around it." Ellie continued eating her food and took a drink of water from a cup that was next to her tray. Isaac deactivated his helmet and received a look from Vandal and some of the other students, which he ignored.

Nick wanted to ask Isaac some of her questions but was interrupted by Ellie "So, what kind of classes do you take at this academy?" She asked the dragons sitting at the table.

Cynder finished chewing eating what was in her mouth and said. "It all depends on what we have selected to do for the city when we've finished school. Spyro and I are joining the military division, so we are taking things that others are not, like hunting, survival, and combat." She continued eating so that Vandal and Nick could explain what they do.

"I'm into mechanics, specially engineering for the city's defensive weapons." Vandal said.

"I'm also an engineer." Isaac said.

Vandal turned to face the human. "You are?" He asked.

"That's what I've been doing for years." Isaac said.

Ellie looked at Isaac and Vandal. "Nerds." She said to herself while rolling her eyes. "So what are you studying?" She asked Nick.

"I'm in the field medical division. That's why I was out in the forest with Spyro and Cynder when we meet you." Nick said to Ellie. She took a glance at Isaac and noticed that he had a distressed look on his face "What's wrong Isaac?" She asked. It was as if every time she spoke about herself, he would have an annoyed look on his face.

Isaac looked up from his tray to face the her, "It's nothing." He said. "I'll see you all later; I need to go do something." He said as he stood up from the table and grabbed his tray.

Nick faced the others and said, "Is he in a bad mood today?" Everyone just shrugged and kept eating. 'I'll talk to him the next time I see him.' She thought.

"So what class do you take first?" Ellie asked the dragons at her table.

"Spyro and I have to go through intermediate tactics first while Nick goes to biology." Cynder said. Nick was a little surprised that Cynder knew her schedule even though it changed every week.

"I go through math first then carpentry next." Vandal said as he stood up from the table. "I have to go now; I'll see you later today." Vandal waved goodbye to his everyone at the table and exited the cafeteria.

Cynder turned to face Spyro, "We should probably be leaving as well; class will start soon."

"Ok, let's go." Spyro said.

Nick got up and left the area by herself and went to her biology class. The class went on for about an hour of just basic systems of the body that everybody already knew about. Once the class was done, Nick rushed out of the room to get to her next class before she got caught in the traffic of the hallways; unfortunately she wasn't fast enough. Dragons flooded the hallway, all rushing to get where ever they needed to be. 'Crap' She thought. 'Now I know I'm going to be late.' She tried to dodge as many of the others as she could but like most days, she almost got trampled over in certain areas of the temple. 'They need to expand this campus or make the hallways bigger.' She tried looking over the crowd to see how far her class room was from her when she saw a familiar face. "Isaac!" She called out. It looked as though he didn't hear her, so she tried to get closer to him. 'I can be late to my class just this once.' She tried to get Isaac to be able to notice by shouting as loud as she could. "Wait for me!" It still didn't work. Nick tried to close the gap between them as much as possible before he got out of her sights. She eventually followed him out into one of the courtyards and found him on the ground as though someone had tripped him. "Are you ok?" She asked as she tried to help him up.

Isaac was about halfway up when she saw him flinch really badly as If he had seen a ghost. "Get the fuck away from me Nicole." Isaac said in a very low voice.

"What?" Nick asked in disbelief.

"Stay away from me Nicole!" Isaac shouted out loud.

Nick wasn't sure what she did that would make Isaac say something like that to her. Tears started to form in her eyes as she ran back into the hallways, pushing her way through the crowds of dragons, trying to conceal her face with her wings.

* * *

'So he didn't really mean to say those things.' She thought. "So, did she say anything to you?" she asked Isaac.

"She said that in one month that 'they' would arrive but I'm not sure who she was talking about." Isaac answered.

"I'm sure that it's nothing" Nick said.

They both sat still for around five minutes without talking to each other because there was nothing to be said. The silence was broken when the timer that Isaac set, went off and startled Nick, unlike Isaac.-who was used to the sound- the built-in computer in Isaac's RIG projected a message that Isaac set for when the alarm went off "Time to go" it displayed.

The message closed after a few seconds of being displayed. Isaac stood up and said to Nick, "I have to go. Be careful out there."

"You're the one who should be careful; I'm not the one being attacked." She said before getting up herself. "I'll meet with you later on."

They both said the last of their goodbyes and went their separate ways, Isaac went to find Ellie while Nick found her assigned medical team and went back into Warfang.

Isaac rushed back to where Ellie was, he knew that he was already late to go topside. He turned on his locator and set a path that led to Ellie's RIG. The locator blinked once and made a blue line across the ground to its destination even though Isaac couldn't see it. 'I hope she didn't leave without me' he thought while he sprinted across the blue line. After a little while more of running, Isaac arrived at the spot where he was at with Ellie earlier but she wasn't anywhere to be seen. "Fuck, they already left without me." He said to himself behind his helmet. Although his locator was leading him in a different direction to Ellie's location, he still decided to turn it off and look around to see if Ellie left anything behind. He checked around the area, taking a quick look behind the rock that they were sitting on, he found his plasma cutter fully loaded along with three four-teen round magazines and a note that said, 'Take this with you next time, I'm tired of keeping up with your crap. I also have your pulse rifle and I'm starting to like it, so if you want to keep it then get your ass over here now.' At the bottom of the of the crumpled up note it had a small signature, - Ellie. Isaac chuckled at her note and picked up his weapon and ammo along with any spirit gems that Ellie didn't pick up. 'She had better not keep my gun.' He joked to himself.

He looked at his locator again and turned it on; the light made another path that went down the pathway and into a building that went to the surface and led straight to Ellie. "Let's finish this."

**For those who play a game called Star Craft 2 and want to chat or play a few matches then send me a message and we'll meet up on there. If you have any question, comments, or ideas for this story then please leave a review or pm me.- USAF ParaJumper**


	17. The reason why

**Well i have some explaining to do, the reason that i didnt update last week is because I'm currently studying for my armed services vocational aptitude battery test for the Air Force (ASVAB) so until March 20th i will only be able to update every two weeks then after that it will go back to evey week.**

Captain Thompson was laying awake on his bed while looking out his small window that was only two feet long, two feet wide, and four feet thick and the whole thing was bullet-proof and sealed to the wall surrounding it. He watched all of the stars, planets – both large and small – and moons that they would pass as the hours went by. There was a small, box-shaped clock that was resting on his nightstand that displayed three o'clock a.m. – ship board time - in green digits. Some of the medication that Thompson would take would cause him to be a lot less drowsy at night. The Captain left the bridge of the ship and went to his quarters at eleven the previous night and hasn't been able to sleep at all. He sat up in his bed and rubbed his eyes while he let out a sigh. 'At least I only have to take this damn medicine for a few more days.' The Captain couldn't take sitting in his bed any longer, he had to do something; so he threw off his bed covers and put on his newly dry-cleaned uniform. "Might as well meet some more of the crew members." He said to himself quietly.

He finished putting on his shoes and made his way to his door. Without much sound, the doors slid open; Thompson exited his room and the automated door closed behind him once he was clear of its way. He looked at his wrist and activated his newly acquired locator that he requested. it displayed a map of USG Caliber; he was one of the lucky on the ship few that had this newer type of model. Unlike the older ones, this one displayed a programmed map that all that you had to do was touch the area where you want to go and it will also display the distance until you arrive there along with an estimated time of arrival that depended on the user's average speed. He scanned the map layout with his eyes briefly and then touched one of the break rooms. The locator closed the display and made a light green path along the ground. It also gave off a small pulse that was designed to increase the frequency of it as he moved closer to his destination, it was a setting that was optional but he liked it because it was unique from any of the normal displays. He walked along the path for ten minutes before he arrived at an elevator that was along his path. The doors opened and standing in the elevator were three Earth Gov. soldiers that immediately went to the position of attention when they saw the officer. "At ease." Thompson said. The men relaxed and waited for the Captain to enter the elevator.

Thompson walked inside and pushed a button to his right. "Good morning sir." One of the soldiers said.

"Good morning." He greeted back to him. "So what do you think of the ship?"

"I haven't had much experience with planet cracker class vessels but she seems alright." Another soldier said to their C.O. "With all due respect sir, why are you in charge of a non-military vessel. Why are any of us here?"

The Captain didn't have a good answer, his chain-of-command said that they made a contract with them to protect them from terrorist attacks like on the USG Ishimura but he knew better than to believe that bullshit story. "We are doing security work for them as far as I was allowed to know."

The Earth Gov. soldiers were a little surprised that the Captain wasn't even sure what they were doing there. There was a slight hiss when the elevator doors opened when they arrived at the soldier's destination, they said their goodbyes to the Captain and exited the elevator. Thompson pressed a button to his right that closed the door. The elevator once again took off to his destination, it was only a few levels higher so it only took a few seconds before the door opened once again. It opened to a plain-looking white hallway. He stepped out of the elevator and turned on his locator again and it displayed his selected path again. the green path started to pulse at a much faster rate than before, he could tell that he was about halfway there. 'Still need to ride the tram.' The transport wasn't too far from his location and because most of the crew didn't work vampire hours, – night shift - there shouldn't be very many people to side track him. Walking to the tram took just a little bit longer than expected because of his slow pace, he entered the tram station and waited for the tram to arrive. It must have been his lucky day because he only had to wait for about a minute before it came to a grinding halt in front of him.

The doors opened and about seven different miners stepped out of the tram. Thompson could tell that they were all at a bar getting drunk off their asses. They were all laughing and running into each other as they left the station. 'At least I'm heading in the right direction.' Only two others entered the tram with him, they both were obviously tired and didn't pay much attention to anybody.

Thompson took the closest empty seat to the door. "Estimated time to arrival: three minutes." A voice on the intercom announced. The tram didn't make a sound as it rolled swiftly across the rails that were attached to the top of the tram. Although the ride was going to be a short one, Thompson tried to close his eyes for a little while. "Destination arrival in thirty seconds." Thompson let out a groan, he wanted to just sit there and sleep for a few hours, it actually felt more comfortable than his bed ever did.

A small buzzer went off and the doors next to him opened to let everybody out of the tram. Thompson got up and walked out of door way as it was being crowded by drunks that were trying to get back to their quarters or heading to another bar because they were kicked out of the one that they were just in. He turned on his locator again and it gave off a rapid pulse, Thompson estimated that he was just a few minutes away from the rest area. He exited the tram station and walked along a hallway that looked a lot nicer than a lot of other areas on the ship. There was a large sign next to a set of doors that said, "Rest area 13" He opened the doors and in front of him was a very large area that resembled a food court in any large mall.

There was one area that was getting a lot more attention than any other area, unsurprisingly it was the bar area. He walked up one of the bars and ordered a shot of whiskey. When his drink arrived he was called out by a few miners that were sitting at a table, "Hey, Captain come sit with us and have a few drinks."

Thompson grabbed his shot glass and went to the table where the miners were and took an empty seat, "How are the drinks here?" He asked.

"Well I'm still here so they must be good." Another miner declared while he slurred his words. "My name Harold," He pointed to the miner who invited the Captain to their table, "that's Alex," He pointed to the last worker and said, "and that guy is James." His took another swig of his beer and said, "So what brings you here Captain?"

Thompson took a sip of his drink and said, "I'm just not tired, in fact if you don't mind me asking, what exactly in on that planet that you all are willing to crack open to get your hands on?" Thompson finished his drink and set the glass on the table.

Alex said, "We have a contract from some medical company that is willing to pay some big cash for us to get them a ton of these crystals that have some kind of weird shit in them that has some kind of extraordinary healing powers." He let out a chuckle as he finished his sentence. "I think that they are just a bunch of damn rocks that look pretty if you ask me." Alex took a drink from a half-empty vodka bottle that he had been drinking for a while.

Thompson grabbed his shot glass and said, "If you all would excuse me, I'm going to get another drink." He got up from the table and went back to the bar. He signaled the waiter and gave him his glass and ordered two more shots of whiskey and gave him some cash to pay for the three drinks that he ordered. The waiter put the money in a register and poured his drinks. Thompson had a shot in each hand and walked back to the table.

When he arrived he noticed that the miners had already left the table along with their empty cans and bottles. 'That was rude.' He thought. He finished his drinks and set them back on the counter of the bar. Thompson looked back at the table and its mess, he didn't want to leave it the way it was for the bar tender to pick up so he gathered the trash that was scattered about the table and threw them away in a disposal bin. He looked at his watch as it flashed three thirty, 'I have to work in an hour and a half; might as well try to see If I can get some sleep.'

**Again, I will only be able to update every other week until March 20th when I take my test to see if I'm trainable for the Air Force. If you have any question, comments or ideas for this story, please review or pm me. (please review even if you want to yell at me for not updating, it helps this story alot.) Also I am pleased to announce that I am currently working on my next story that will start after this one is done.**


	18. I'm getting tired of this

**I know, I didn't update yesaterday, I found out that I have a Possible hernia from swimming.**

After two straight days of nothing but the sounds of cannon fire, building after building falling apart, and warriors killing each other, the battle ground fell silent. Isaac looked around him, there were bodies of soldiers of both his allies and his enemies alike as far as he could see; their luke-warm blood drained from their rotting, former homes and staining the once green fields that had turned brown from chocking on blood. There was a soft wind that blew past Isaac as he knelt down onto the field outside of Warfang where most of the battle took place. By his feet was a young wind dragon that has been dead for a few hours. Isaac could tell that his death was not quick or pleasant; both of the dragon's wings were completely ripped from his body and were no longer in sight. One of his eyes was gouged out and left part of its brain exposed while the other eye had a large cut going through it. The dragon had a deep cut going through its stomach that penetrated the cavity, allowing a few of his organs to seep out of him. It seemed as though the dragon was hit during its flight and fell into a crowd of blood-thirsty apes that showed no sign of showing any amount of mercy to the creature. Isaac didn't realize how vicious their enemy was; he looked around again and saw that this wind dragon wasn't any different from any other of the mutilated bodies. In fact, this one had it easier than some of the others that were torn limb from limb and had spears sticking out of their necks. He placed his hand on the side of the dragons face that still had an eye and closed it and said, "We might have hated each other but you've earned your rest Zephyr."

Isaac activated his helmet and stood up as it took shape around his head. He turned on his kinesis module and lifted Zephyr's limp body. The last of the dragon's blood dripped from his body as it was lifted five feet in the air. Just like every other corpse that Isaac came across, this one gave off one of the worst stenches that he had ever smelt. There was a small flash of blue as Isaac's RIG came on and Show Ellie standing next to Cynder. The young black dragon was facing away from her and was sniffing at an apes' body. "Hey, were in the field about a mile away from you." She said in a soft voice. "Were finishing off the surviving apes. After that we are going to help clearing the bodies; do you know where we are taking them?"

There was a snapping sound that came from behind Ellie; she turned and Isaac was able to get a clear view of Cynder snapping the neck of the small ape that she was investigating a little while ago. Cynder looked back at them, "Sorry about that. This one was still breathing" She said and went back to searching for survivors.

"Anyways." Isaac said which got Ellie's attention back, "The moles are digging a trench to the bodies of our guys. The apes' bodies are going into the swamp about five miles from here so the birds or whatever kind of predators live here can pick at the bodies; the dragons will be taking care of their bodies though so don't worry about them." Isaac looked past the screen and was able to see Ellie along with a group of moles and a few dragons around a mile from him. "I'll come to you and we'll start the clean-up where you are."

"Ok I will see you in a little while." She said before she ended the transmission.

The sun was starting to go down, Isaac estimated that they only had about three hours left of sunlight to work with. Although the dragon's weight didn't affect Isaac because of his module, he was starting to get tired of holding his arm up as he walked. He was about half way there when he needed to put the body down. The dragon was eased to the ground and set in a very small clearing. Isaac sat down on a dead apes' corpse and realized just how tired and worn out his body really was. Most of his body felt as though he just came out of sugary without anything to take care of the pain. There was also a constant pain in his side that was bothering him for a while rested for a few minutes while trying not to look at Zephyr's body, although being around dead bodies has almost become second nature to him, Isaac still didn't want to be reminded of the Sprawl. The kinesis module flashed once and lifted the dragon a few feet in front of Isaac. The walk to Ellie only took around seven more minutes, she was busy helping one of the dragons load some bodies onto carts to take to the trenches while the other dragons were taking three or four apes at a time to the swamp.

Ellie wiped some blood off of her hands onto a patch of grass and went to Isaac, "Hey." She said. She turned to her right and grabbed some spears that were laying broken on the ground. "We are almost done for the night." Ellie looked at the dragon that Isaac held with his kinesis module, "Did you bring that one from where you were over there?"

"I knew this one." He told her.

Ellie glanced at the dragon again but didn't recognize him at all. "Ok then. Can you load that one onto the cart and help me put these weapons in a pile?"

"Sure thing." Isaac replied. The cart was just a few hundred feet away from him; it was simple in design, a wooden cart that was about fifteen feet long, eight feet wide, around three feet off the ground and looked as though it could fill around thirty moles. Isaac gently placed the body in the cart and started to make his way back to Ellie.

He could see her sitting down on a rock and started rubbing her wrist as though she sprained it. Isaac was right next to her and was about to say something but she was a bit quicker than he was at starting conversations, "Are you tired?" She asked him.

Isaac took a seat next to her and said, "Well I haven't slept for around fifteen hours because I choose not to do the rotation, so I guess."

"Not physically tired. I mean mentally." She said calmly.

"What do you mean?" He asked her.

Ellie unclipped her plasma cutter from her belt had held it out in front of her and stared at it as she said, "Are you tired of all of the violence? We almost didn't make it off of the sprawl, we both had to kill people that were important to us; I had to kill my crew and you had to kill Stross."

Isaac deactivated his helmet and let it go back into his Advance RIG as he said, "I know how you feel, but like some of the dragons and moles said before, this was most likely the last of them from their war. But at least they were not humans that we had to kill."

"I know they were not bloody humans but the killing still reminded me of the people that died on the sprawl." She protested. "All of that was done by the Marker and that was destroyed along with the others that they were making there." Isaac tried to erasure her.

"But what if they had some Markers that were already finished being built before you destroyed that one and they sent them off somewhere else before we knew about it." She pointed out.

Isaac didn't know what to tell her. If Earth Gov. did make the marker on the Sprawl then they should have had plenty of time to make others during his three years of captivity. "I don't think that they have. I don't know why I just do."

"You still haven't answered my question yet." Ellie said.

"Which one was that?" "Are you tired of all the killing?"

Isaac sighed and said, "Yes."

**Well that took a while for such a short chapter. Anyway, I want to know something from everyone: would you all like me to post a sneak peak for my next story in my next update? If I do then I will also tell you my plans for this stroy, my next one, and a sequal for this story. If you have any question, comments or ideas about this story then please leave a review or pm me.**


	19. Complications

**I am sorry. Sorry that it took so long to get this out. My ASVAB studying got the better of me and the promotion cycle for ROTC just came up. **

Two weeks have passed since the attack on Warfang was won. Everyone put in their greatest effort to start to restore the city but because of the extent of the damage, it will take another eight months to a year and a half to have just the city's building fully repaired without the artwork that the moles put into it. Isaac had the boring task of moving supplies over to some of the workers for a good part of the day. 'According to Nicole, we have one week until 'they' get here.' he repeated to himself over and over again while he would move large amounts of bricks with his kinesis module.

His nervousness would start to show whenever he would think about what happened in the courtyard. Isaac finished carrying his tenth pallet of bricks to their assigned building, one of the dragons that was working on construction said to him from about twenty feet high, "That was the last one for now, go get something to eat and then come back."

Isaac shouted to her, "Ok, do you want anything from there?" The dragon shook her head from side to side and returned to work. Isaac walked for a few minutes to a rationing area and pulled out a card and waited in a line of civilians and workers alike. Because of the shortages of food, Warfang had to start rationing two meals a day to everyone while they repaired their farms and ranches.

Over the past two weeks, the rations were starting to get smaller and smaller. A few days ago, Spyro talked to the one in charge of the rationing program and was told that they were going to start trading with villages so that it could help support its own population. The villages were more than happy to trade food and supplies to the city for materials and goods to help them.

The food ration that Isaac held in his hands didn't look like it would last him until dinner; it was just a small piece of meat, a few pieces of some kind of fruit, and some bread. He left the area and looked around of a place to sit down and eat. He found a secluded area by a stand that was rebuilt and repurposed to make materials for the workers such as bricks, tools, and other supplies. Isaac waved at the shop owner and said, "Good afternoon, how are you doing?"

"Alright; it's been another busy day with non-stop work. How have you been?" The mole asked while he was measuring a block of wood.

"About the same as you." Isaac said. He deactivated his helmet and started eating his food. The shop owner started working on cutting wooden boards by hand with a medium-sized saw. "So how long have you been into carpentry?" Isaac asked.

The mole cleared some sawdust from his work area and said, "It has been more of a hobby of mine more than a profession. And the city needs me to do this than selling furniture and other stuff that we really don't need right now." The mole continued to make measurements on where to cut the boards while he asked, "What kind of work do you do?"

Isaac set down his piece of bread and said, "I work on spaceships as an engineer, I prefer to do repairing jobs but I can do mostly whatever needs to be done on them." He put down the bread and took some bites out of the fruit. "It takes a lot of practice and schooling but I think that it's worth it in the end." He picked up his plate and activated his helmet and let it take shape around his head before saying, "It was a pleasure to get to talk to you."

The mole was all of a sudden a little more interested in their conversation; he set down his saw and asked right before Isaac could leave, "Could you do that thing once more?"

"Do what?" Isaac replied in a confused manner.

"That thing that makes that helmet of yours appear out of nowhere with all of those pieces of metal." The mole said. Isaac deactivated his helmet as the mole watched in fascination as it broke apart piece by piece and fit perfectly into his RIG around his collar. "How do you make it do that?" He asked.

Isaac activated his helmet once again and said, "It's complicated; I would explain it to you but I don't think that we have the time for me to be able to sit down and do that." 'I doubt that you will even be able to understand anything about this suit.' Isaac thought to himself.

"You must put a lot of faith into that technology of yours. I would hate to know what would happen if even one of those little pieces were to mess up and go into one of your eyes of something like that." The mole said as he gestured toward his eye. "I don't know the chances of something like that happening but you would never catch me trying one of those on."

Isaac's eye started to hurt again as he was reminded about the machine he was in back on the Sprawl. "I guess I will see you later." He said as he walked away without another word.

The rest of the day dragged on for hours with nothing but intensive labor with no end in sight. Isaac was used to working multiple sixty-hour weeks when the time called of it, but he knew that this could very well go on for another month of working this type of schedule. All that Isaac was tasked to do once he got back from lunch was to move heavy objects from point A to point B. He was in the middle of taking a water break when his RIG got a call from Ellie. He turned on his computer and saw that Ellie was in a large field with a swamp around a mile behind her. "Isaac guess where I am." She said to him.

"What?" He replied as he drank some water from a clay cup.

"I'm at the lake that we crashed at." She said.

"So, while I'm doing slave labor for most of the day, your swimming in a lake? Way to be a team player." Isaac joked.

Ellie rolled her eyes and said, "Anyway, I had an idea: if our ship's communications array is still intact or could be repaired, couldn't we just call for help?"

"Wait a minute. If it took us days to get from there to here, how did you get there so fast? I saw you this morning." He questioned.

"Volteer gave me a ride. He did it in exchange of being able to study the ship." She said.

Isaac sighed and said, "Ellie, first we would need to get it out of the lake which is probably three hundred feet deep. Secondly, I highly doubt that the communications are operational after being down there and under water for almost a full month. And thirdly, how are we going to find the ship in that lake? We didn't exactly record which part of the lake we crashed in."

Ellie was about to answer but Volteer stepped behind her and said, "Well if we are able to locate your vessel, I would be able to underneath the water to help retrieve it either by dragging it across the bottom to the shore; depending on the distance and come up for air when needed. Or I could use my wings to provide the essential lift to bring myself back to the surface."

Isaac thought about their options and spoke, "Well the only way that I see us being able to find it would be Volteer and I swimming out there for hours trying to find it, but I don't see him being able to do that."

"Why not?" The dragon asked.

"You're an electric dragon."

"I only release that charge when I wish to, I will not be affected." The dragon said.

Before Isaac could counter, Ellie cut into the conversation. "Then it's settled. We will come back to Warfang and leave in the morning."

**As promised in my last chapter, here is the sneak peak for my next story, That Others May Live. Enjoy.**

"Sir, we need to leave. Where are you going?" Staff Sergeant Willis called out to his superior who was running at a quick pace away from his twelve-man team.

"I will be back before we leave, I need to take care of something first." Technical Sergeant Sanborn yelled back to the other Pararescuemen over the sound of the helicopter blades starting to spin up.

He ran for a few hundred meters into a more quiet place on the airfield and pulled out his Bible that he kept in one of his large pockets in his cargo pants. He knelt down onto one knee and pulled out his helmet and prayed. "God, I thank you for the life that you have given me. Although some parts could have been better but they were always done in your will. This mission that I'm about to go on is by far the most dangerous one that I've been on so far. We were told that if something were to happen we might not get help in time. If it is your will that I die than so be it." Sanborn start to have a tear from in his eye as he started to think of what could happen to him. He wiped the tear away and continued to pray. "And if I am to die, then please let me be shot in the head so that I won't feel any pain. A chest wound is nasty but they don't last very long. But God, please, if my armor should fail me, please don't let it be a gut shot. It takes a long time for a man to die that way. And if I am to fall, I pray that someone might be there with me if that happens. If you could please arrange that then please do so. I also pray that no matter what happens, that you will provide for my wife Jennifer back in the states. In your name I pray, amen."

**This story ha nothing to do with Spyro at all. This is going to be a Call of Duty story but it has nothing**


	20. A good swim

**Well, I'm a jackass. Its been a month and a half since I last updated this story. I have no excuess as to why I didnt update. I am truly sorry.**

Isaac was asleep inside of his make-shift tent that he made out of some iron bars that he smelted and a few blankets in the rubble of one of the buildings. It wasn't the most comfortable thing on this planet but it was acceptable to him. As the sun started to rise, his eyes slowly began to open s the area gradually became brighter and brighter. He could hear the sound of a dragon flying around nearby and groaned because of the unwanted noise. "Go away." He moaned. The sound of the dragon was getting closer by the minute until it sounded like it was a few yards away then suddenly stopped. Isaac was then disturbed by the sound of a message sent to his RIG and was displayed in front of him. The brightness of the display caused him to open his eyes and to read the message.

"You almost done getting ready? – Ellie" It read.

Isaac immediately opened his eyes. 'Fuck!' he thought, 'Were supposed to go to the lake!' he quickly got out of his bed and scurried around and tried to find his plasma cutter.

Isaac checked his repurposed weapon to see if there was ammo in it then put it into his inventory. He turned on his RIG's computer and turned on the video chat and called Ellie.

A few seconds later, as Isaac was walking out of his tent, Ellie answered his call and said, "I'm on my way. I'll be there with Volteer in a minute."

"Got it." Isaac answered. Ellie ended the chat before Isaac could. He searched the sky to try to find Volteer, a little while later, he could see another yellow dragon coming his way. 'That must be them.' he thought.

The dragon lowered his speed and preformed a soft landing a few yards away from Isaac. Ellie was riding on his back right behind his wings. "Come on we are shot on time, I must be back by sundown to meet with the other guardians." Volteer said as he lowered himself to allow Isaac to take a seat right behind Ellie. "Are you two ready?" He asked the humans. They gave him a thumbs up and held on to his back. The dragon flapped his wings a few times and they slowly began to rise off the ground. Once Volteer was about fifty feet off the ground, he adjusted the angle of his wings and they began to fly through Warfang.

Isaac looked around and admired the view that they had. He could see most of the city of Warfang along with around seven miles in any direction. Even though the ride was a bit rough, and the seat was not the most relaxing, he enjoyed the ride to the lake which only took around half an hour.

Volteer landed about one hundred feet away from the shore and knelt down to let Isaac and Ellie off of his back, "About how far into the water did you crash?"

Volteer asked. Isaac thought for a moment and looked at Ellie, "Would you say eight hundred yards?" Ellie looked out to the lake and made an estimation.

"I'd say so." She answered.

Isaac turned to Volteer, "Yeah around eight hundred maybe seven hundred yards, but I'm not sure from which side from the lake. It was a hard swim and I didn't take the best look."

The dragon looked at the lake again, "Well, we could wade into the water and search for attachments of the vessel in the body of water; then see if we could find a line of the wreckage and follow it to the main area of impact." Volteer said hastily. Both of the humans could sense the dragon's excitement by the tone if his voice.

Isaac started to walk towards the water with Ellie. The lake was about four miles wide and two miles long and Isaac had no idea how deep it was or what type of creatures were inside. "Ellie, do you mind walking around the perimeter and look for any parts if the ship?"

Ellie looked along the shore and said, "No problem. I'll tell you if anything turns up. And be careful." She told him.

Isaac nodded, activated his helmet and walked into the water. The lake was up to his knees before he saw Volteer fly out to the middle of the lake and dive into the middle of it. As he went deeper into the lake, Isaac did a test of the respirator in his RIG. With the modifications that he made to it while his was on the sprawl he could stay under the surface for four minutes until he needed to come up to refill it. Isaac swam two hundred yards out and dove underneath the surface. 'Damn it. Just as I feared, can't see the bottom.' He thought to himself. He turned on the radio to his RIG and called Ellie, "Hey this might take longer than expected. I'm hardly away from the shore and I can't see the bottom of the lake." He told her.

"Well how far down can you see?" She asked.

He pulled out his plasma cutter and turned on the flashlight attachment. He looked all around and could only see small fish swimming by. "I can't see shit, visibility is very low here." He told her.

"I haven't seen anything yet." She told him. "I'll call you if I see anything."

Isaac took another look around. "Ok." He said as he turned off his radio. Isaac lit the way as he dove farther down. He started to see some rocks when his oxygen read one hundred and ninety seconds. He knew that he would he would have to come up soon or else he wouldn't have enough air to make it back to the surface. Surprisingly, there wasn't much plant life in this part of the lake, there was nothing but rocks and small caves. He would scan an area for a few seconds then move to the next. After a little bit more searching, his RIG only had about a minute of air left so he made his way back to the surface. He reached the surface and allowed his air supply to recharge and to rest. The tank filled up in about twenty seconds then dove into the water again. This went on for around forty-five minutes until he needed to go back to the shore for a rest. During his break, Isaac met up with Ellie and Volteer. They all discussed what how their search went. Ellie couldn't locate anything along the shore, they suspected that the apes saw them crash, followed them, and took whatever they could find on land. Volteer found a small scrape of metal and search all around it but couldn't find anything, he believed that some kind of creature in the water relocated it.

Volteer used his claw to draw a rough sketch of the lake in the sand and drew various landmarks to show the different sides of the lake. "I started searching here and found nothing." He said as he started scratching out part of the drawing of the lake, leaving only about half of the map unmarked. "Isaac, can you remember where you've searched?"

The engineer walked over to the picture. "I defiantly remember searching in this area here." He said as he shaded in about an eighth of an area on the drawing. "So at least this narrows our search. And nothing turned up n the shore." He took a seat and deactivated his helmet. "So now we need to walk to the other side of the lake search that area."

Ellie groaned at this, "Great, more walking." She complained.

Isaac chuckled a little bit as they got up. Volteer flew back into the lake to search some more while Isaac and Ellie started walking. They didn't talk at all during their walk to the search area of the lake but when they did get there, Volteer popped out of the water and flew toward them with something in his paw. He touched down on the shore and held out the object. "Isaac, I found this contraption out there."

Isaac took the metal object out of the dragon's possession. It was definitely part of the ship and was partially covered in rust. The object was a metal cylinder and had a rod coming out of one of the sides. "This looks like one of the compression cylinders for the fuel. Show me where you found this." Isaac told Volteer. He then turned to Ellie and said, "I'll be back in a little while, this might be it." He then ran off into the water and activated his helmet as Volteer took flight to the spot that he surfaced and started to hover at the spot.

Isaac swam out to where Volteer was and started to tred water. "This is approximately the area that I found it." The dragon said.

Isaac dove into the water and held his plasma cutter out in front of him and turned on the flash light. This area of the lake was surprisingly clearer then where he was earlier. After diving to around fifty feet, he was able to barely see the bottom; he estimated that it was about two hundred feet deep and made up of a fair amount of plant life and several different fish-like creatures of all different colors, it look like an entirely different body of water from where he searched earlier. It didn't take long for him to find some pieces of metal. He found panels, flaps, even part of an engine, and the best part was that he was finding more and more as he swam.

Isaac went up to refill his oxygen supply and found Volteer flying towards him. "Did you find anything else?" The dragon asked him.

"I found a lot of stuff that broke off. The ship must be somewhere near here. How about you dive down and look some more but don't disturb the bottom or else I won't be able to see." Isaac informed him. Volteer nodded and dove into the water to search followed by Isaac. He held out his light source and searched for Volteer. He didn't have to look long due to the dragon's color. They both search the bottom and continued to find more and more parts. After a little bit more searching Volteer was trying to get Isaac's attention. 'What is it now?' Isaac thought. He turned and saw Volteer pointing at the ship which rested around one hundred feet away. 'Holy shit.' He thought as he turned on his RIG and called Ellie. Once she answered, Isaac said, "Found it."

"That's great news. See if the radio is still functioning." She said.

"No shit. I thought that I was just goanna take a few pictures and leave. I'll see if it is." He hung up after that. He examined the ship and saw that it was resting on its side. He went to the front of the ship and used his plasma cutter to break through the five-inch glass which he was surprised that it hadn't already been broken. He entered the ship and found a large air pocket that he could even stand up in. He surfaced in the air pocket and allow his air tank to recharge while he looked for supplies that they missed which was near to none. He dove back into the water and swam to the cockpit and searched for the radio. He removed a half-shredded panel and located the communications part. He removed the three foot box-like equipment and exited the ship. Isaac got Volteer's attention and pointed up to the surface. Them swam up and Volteer took the equipment back to the shore while Isaac swam back.

Once he got back he walked over to Ellie and Volteer and knelt down by the box and examined it. "I'm surprised that this thing isn't completely destroyed from the crash. With that kind of water landing this thing should be non-functioning."He said.

"But does it work?" Ellie said in a concerned voice.

"I'll look at it back in Warfang."He replied.

**I have a piece of good news, In about one maby two weeks I will post my first chapter of my new Call of Duty story, "That Others May Live" and because summer is coming up, it will allow me more time to write these stories. If you have any question, comments, or ideas for these stories, please leave a review or pm me, it will aslo help my motavation for my writing. - USAF ParaJumper**


	21. Transmission

**First off I want to ****apologize for three things, first off, the late updates, the short chapter, and that this was probably my worst one yet. I've had to put in a lot of hours at my job and at ROTC and I'm about to go to MEPS for the Air Force.**

It has been four days since Isaac was able to remove the equipment from their crashed ship. After all of those hours spent trying to get even a signal form it was a lost cause. Isaac knew that there would be damage done to the communication system but Ellie wanted him to try his best to make it work. If he had access to the right tools, he might have been able to make it somewhat work but the technology just wasn't around on this planet to help him fix this. Ellie kept pushing him to get it to work, she got him everything that she thought that could help him but there just wasn't anything that she could do. They both resided in one of the small hut like buildings that was built at the South side of the city away from where the civilians were residing at the North-West area. It was nearing the evening and Isaac and Ellie were just lying down on some mats that they found in surprisingly good condition.

Ellie glanced over at the communication box that was in the corner of the room which was only good for a paperweight at the moment. She glared at it and wanted to take Isaac's pulse rifle and shoot the crap out of it but it would be a waste of ammo. She looked back at Isaac, who was playing a game of solitaire on his RIG while laying down. She said to him, "We aren't going back, are we?"

Isaac let out a sigh and looked at her and said, "Where would we go? Everyone more than likely knows what happened to the Sprawl and what do you think that they would do if they find out that we were there? They would isolate us, test us, and if they are paranoid enough, either kill us or drop us off on some kind of planet that we couldn't survive on."

Ellie didn't reply to his statement, she just looked away and stared out of the single window in the room and gazed at the sky. She longed to be able to return to a human civilization, to be able to sit down and talk or drink with friends, to be able to start a family. She wanted to be able to explore like she was able to as a pilot around two months ago and to be able to visit other planets again. The tension had been building in her for weeks now and she just wanted to let it all out; she felt like killing something. "I want to leave this fucking planet." She told Isaac in a low voice.

"I want to leave as well, but we are not able to." He replied.

Ellie let out a sigh and got up onto her feet. "I'm going for a walk." She told him as she left. The door to the shack was just a large piece of cloth that was pinned to the top of the frame; it gave them the privacy they wanted but it was a bitch to try to keep the warmth in at night. Ellie picked a random direction and started to walk with her hands in her pockets. She wanted to find somebody to try to talk to so she could keep her mind off of other things.

Back at the small hut that the humans were residing in, Isaac was lying on his back with nothing to do. "Two days." He thought to himself. He turned off his game and rubbed his eyes. He was bored out of his mind; Isaac had never had this much free time once he became an engineer and he has no way of spending it. He looked around the room for anything that could distract him for the time being but only saw the communication system that was lying in the corner of the room. "Might as well look at it again." He slowly got up on his feet and walk to the device and moved it to the center area where he would have more room to work on it. The top panel opened with ease, it did a good job to block water from entering it but the crash made a lot of things break under pressure during the impact. Isaac needed to make an antenna to find signals and ping them back to the device, if he was able to fix it, then that ping would let him know that it was working.

Isaac wanted to hit himself for not thinking about the technical aspect of this device instead of the physical side. He had just been looking for more structural damage for the past few days and Ellie wasn't much help breathing down his neck the entire time. Now he definitely knew that he has been spending too much time away from his job.

After about two hours later, Isaac began to wonder why Ellie had been gone for so long. She hadn't sent him any messages or called him at all. The radio that he had been working on hasn't made any progress yet and he really didn't believe that it could be fixed. 'Might as well put this thing to rest and find Ellie.' he thought to himself. He decided that instead of calling her, that he would walk around looking for her, mainly to get away from the communication system. He was getting so frustrated at the piece of crap that he stuck him middle finger at it, kicked it, and walked out.

Once he walked out, a green light flickered on the radio and a low hum could be heard followed by the sound of a man who said, "This is Captain Thomson of the USG Caliber broadcasting this message on all frequencies, we are about to enter the syste-" the radio was starting to cut off. "warning any ships to keep clear of our path. We will enter th-... in twelve hours. Again keep clear of our pa-" the radio fell silent once again.

** I really just wanted to rush through this chapter so that I could get to the part where the USG Caliber is on the planet. Also i posted my new story "That Others May Live" you can check that out in the my stories section on my profile. And one more thing, due to the 85% fail rate of Combat Controllers, I'm going to enter the Air Fore in the tactical air control party. One last thing, there is going to be a convention in Austin, Texas called RTX, I will be attending this and if anyone else reading this is also going, please send me a PM so we could meet up there. If you have any questions, comments, or ideas, please write a review or send me a PM. - USAF ParaJumper.**


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